[LASS Soaring] " I DID IT!"

[Brian Kopke]

Good try Gordy, a five hour flight is nothing to sneeze at.  And it's good
practice for an 8 hour.  I had a less fun day on Friday.  I got off early
and made a beeline for Frankfort based on the forecast from that morning.
The wind seemed good and there were plenty of vultures and hawks sloping,
mostly down near the radio tower.  For some reason, I couldn't get a decent
flight in to save my tail.   I made three trips down the hill  fetching my
plane and only made 6-8 flights total-none more than a few minutes long.  I
would get into some really good slope lift then it would just disappear and
I would have to bail towards the lip or the back side puckering the whole
way.  After the third trip down the hill and a lot of rocks thrown to
retrieve my plane from 25' up a tree I gave up.  One of my control linkages
was broken off anyway.  I checked the weather when I got home and the wind
had shifted to the west and wasn't as strong as earlier in the day.  Plus I
think there was some thermal activity robbing the lift as well.  Not one of
my better days flying, but even when it's bad it's still pretty good.

Found a couple of pretty sweet fossils on my ventures down the slope so the
day wasn't a total loss.  I was thinking about it while I was picking the
bark out of my hair on the way home and I don't think I will climb down
there any more without somebody else there.  It wouldn't be hard to take a
nasty spill and not be found for awhile.

Brian

On 10/20/07, GordySoar at aol.com <GordySoar at aol.com> wrote:
>
>  Yep and it was worth the effort too. Have to tell you that I am exhausted
> too. Never once was able to just sit down and watch the Marauder on 2.4cruise.
>
> The forecast was to dream of.  We all were set and ready on the slope by
> 9, but the air was dead calm.  At 10a.m. I figured its got to pick up, so
> set up a bungee and popped her up about 50' over the slope.
>
> At 4 hours, I had spent approximately 50mins in actual slope air, very
> week and troubling but slope air. The rest of the time I had spent battling
> little thermals that took me way off behind the slope.  Three times I tried
> the slope and found my self about 1/8 mile down and in front, my plane
> getting small below in harsh sink only to catch a bubble to get back up.
>
> At just under 5 hours, I was in trouble again, the wind blew right at the
> slope hard, but there was no lift, in fact my plane got hit by some
> incredible sink...my Talking Timer screamed out "Three Hours Left"..as I
> turned back toward the slope in a piece of what looked like flight saving
> lift, but in fact was the edge of a chunk of huge sink....it plopped the
> Marauder right on the top of a hundred foot Ash, about 60' down the slope
> face...very steep, very loose black dirt and shale rock.
>
> It wouldn't have counted in any case for slope but it was the most
> thumbing I'd ever done in my life, so no regrets.  Drove the 3 hour round
> trip to get my climbing gear, pulled its JT Model bag up with me, baggged it
> in the tree and lowered it down...the then hour and a half slip and fall
> climb back up to the top.
>
> Thanks to my pal Tony Utley for standing by just in case.
>
> Yep, you got it...a witnessed 5 hour thermal flight...you? :-)
> Gordy
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
> See what's new at AOL.com <http://www.aol.com?NCID=AOLCMP00300000001170>and Make
> AOL Your Homepage<http://www.aol.com/mksplash.adp?NCID=AOLCMP00300000001169>
> .
>
> _______________________________________________
> Soaring mailing list
> Soaring at louisvillesoaring.org
> http://lists.louisvillesoaring.org/mailman/listinfo/soaring
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://localhost.localdomain/pipermail/soaring/attachments/20071020/443678cc/attachment.htm