Good Fun

The End Of a Great Day

It has been a fun couple weeks. I have been teaching my friends to fly and flying a fair bit myself. The days have been rewarding and challenging but always fun.
Always Worth The Trip

March Kicks Off XC Season

Roy and I had a great day on Tuesday. We both had the day off and headed to the Craters. Roy got off a quick warm up flight to the mail boxes. Then we went back up to try out some late morning thermals. Roy went first and I followed once I saw him with a good climb. We boated around in smooth lift for over a half hour getting about 1400 over launch. It seemed to shut down so I went and looked way out front for more as Roy top landed. He picked me up and we laughed our way up Merriam for some possible XC. Our 1st attempt was feeble as neither one of us had our game on. I left the storage compartment of my harness open and had to side hill land to avoid loosing precious cargo. This left Roy alone and he sank out. He said he was done and would chase me on the next one. So back up we went. I planned on going to the shop just for a quick fun flight and minutes after launching had the needed altitude to make the 2 mile hop. As Roy drove down and I made turns to land at the shop I slowly began to climb and soon found my self at 9000 ft msl. I let Roy know my plans had now changed and I would head out to Leupp Rd. Just south of Junction Crater I found another climb and headed for RC Crater nothing there so I headed for the RC field. A small climb here gave me enough altitude to make it to the Junk Yard so i went for it in hope of lift along the way. There is a little luck to every cross country flight and this was the lucky part of this flight. As I crossed over a small piece of no-mans-land with trees and 2 very large power lines I started climbing. Not fast, yet drifting toward the junk yard and not loosing altitude. This is great because the place usually goes off. It turns out that it was in fact going off. I had my best climb of the day and topped it out at near 9900 ft. Crosswinds and terrain forced me to head south on Cosonino Rd until I ran into snow covered ground and nowhere else to go. I landed near the edge of Walnut Canyon after 1 hour 20 Minutes 16.2 Miles.
The day still had some hours left so we ended the day perfectly by heading up and powering in a couple runs at the Snowbowl then Beers with friends at Harlans Birthday Party.

Looking South Down Leupp Rd From RC Crater.