It's been nearly 5 weeks since I last flew - by far my longest 'no fly' period since I started flying. Lots of reasons (e.g. poor weather, other things to do) and, to be honest, it hasn't been a big deal. Last time I flew was in the S of France at the end of summer; now it is fall in the Pacific NW. It's a big change - more layers and staying up (rather than worrying about retrieves) are the new priorities.
The forecast today was for strong E winds and blue skies. I had hoped to fly Cliffside - a reliable and simple site - but this morning the forecasts just seemed too strong. So I headed to Kutch with a bunch of local pilots.
In Yamhill I met Deanna, Joe, Leo and Todd - none of whom had flown Kutch. We cached Deanna's car below the bail-out LZ and headed up to launch. After the site briefing I was honor bound to launch first. It took maybe 10 minutes of struggling around launch height but then I got up to around 2,900 ft. As in all my Kutch flights, all my lift came from thermals. After boating around for a while, I headed over to the Flying M Ranch for a mini (ok, micro) XC. Todd joined me and we hiked back to Deanna's car. The other pilots had landed in the bail-out; Joe had a long flight trying to get up, I think the other two had fairly brief flights.
Back on launch there were a bunch more pilots and cars. Two HG pilots had decided against launching - too many trees around launch. Some PG pilots had arrived, flown and were back for a second flight.
Four pilots launched and had nice flights in boaty ridge lift / glass-off - completely different conditions from earlier in the day (Kutch is 'full of surprises'). Staying up was obviously easy, but they could only get 2 or 3 hundred feet over launch. I considered launching (I've never had 'easy' lift at Kutch...) but to simplify the logistics I took a car down. Not the greatest of flying, but not too shabby either - a perfect fall day.
Track log -> http://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/277240
The forecast today was for strong E winds and blue skies. I had hoped to fly Cliffside - a reliable and simple site - but this morning the forecasts just seemed too strong. So I headed to Kutch with a bunch of local pilots.
In Yamhill I met Deanna, Joe, Leo and Todd - none of whom had flown Kutch. We cached Deanna's car below the bail-out LZ and headed up to launch. After the site briefing I was honor bound to launch first. It took maybe 10 minutes of struggling around launch height but then I got up to around 2,900 ft. As in all my Kutch flights, all my lift came from thermals. After boating around for a while, I headed over to the Flying M Ranch for a mini (ok, micro) XC. Todd joined me and we hiked back to Deanna's car. The other pilots had landed in the bail-out; Joe had a long flight trying to get up, I think the other two had fairly brief flights.
Back on launch there were a bunch more pilots and cars. Two HG pilots had decided against launching - too many trees around launch. Some PG pilots had arrived, flown and were back for a second flight.Four pilots launched and had nice flights in boaty ridge lift / glass-off - completely different conditions from earlier in the day (Kutch is 'full of surprises'). Staying up was obviously easy, but they could only get 2 or 3 hundred feet over launch. I considered launching (I've never had 'easy' lift at Kutch...) but to simplify the logistics I took a car down. Not the greatest of flying, but not too shabby either - a perfect fall day.
Track log -> http://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/277240
No comments:
Post a Comment