flying Sunday?

[Randall]

Blipmaps are looking promising for Pine. Saturday, not so much.

[BobA]

Forecast indicates southerly moisture, which means cummies. Little John, Hammer, DD, and myself are planning on it. The more the better !

[Rhonda]

Yes! Sunday is an excellent time to come by and visit. You know, that Tony never stops to chat; one minute he's here, the next he's two hundred miles away. And Eddie, he's worse; you know everyone calls him "fast" (wink, wink). Now that Randall on the other hand, he's my type; so handsom, and he spends hours and hours in Christina's meadow, just enjoying the day. Andy too, he just drops in out of the blue...

Come on up on Sunday, I promise I won't move an inch.
Rhonda

[Randall]

What a tease.

[Chip Bartley]

Is there a meet time?

[BobA]

Well after meeting at 9AM at Little John's, six of us headed up to Pine. It was about 9-16 South at launch. It looked blown out with a layer at our level...it was ridge soarable with spicey stuff around the bonzai tree. Everyone managed to go OTB from the knob. I opted to find less broken up lift over the plateaus farther west below the north side launch on the south side. Took a drifter OTB at 7200' into the rotor but bounced in lift to 8000' at the most prominent knob on the backside. Ran past Ozena to the foothills north of the Halfway Station, climbed to 7k...drifted the inland side of the highway to better LZs...Got low, unzipped, found large gentle lift with DD...climbed, zipped up, lost it, got low, unzipped, found it, zipped up...drifted to a line where it was hazy to the west and clear to the east, found a good junk yard thermal to over 7k again...flew down the road into the haze. DD went over the river bed, Lee was deep inside the badlands heading to Taff unable to see the 33...we milked it to the the intersection of 33 and 166. I turned down the 166 to Cuyama and landed short in nice field just before the river bed crossing. Hammer had landed at the Halfway House with harness problems, while Little John, DD, and Lee landed at the intersection of the 33 and 166. Better than nothing. Many thanks to Ian for driving.

[Randall]

Headed up to Chiefs around 11 with Chip, Tom P, Andy, Brendan (and tandem passenger Monica) and visiting Malibu pilot Kurt Rademacher. My friend Joy (from Los Feliz) drove up with us to check out the scene and scenery and graciously accepted the magical transformation from guest to driver with only a few qualms (she made it down fine).

Launch conditions couldn't have been more different from last Sat -- light cycles with frequent lulls. Altitudes weren't great -- about 5800 -- but the wind was super-light over the valley and mountains and the soaring was easy.

I headed to Stooges with 5700 to join Brendan, got a great buoyant glide (20 mph groundspeed), but couldn't find anythiing to work there. Continued on to Bruce's but nada, was getting low so bailed with Brendan to propellor field. Andy made the high school (of course!) and the rest of us landed at the prop field. Not a stellar day, but not bad either.

[Tony de Groot]

Well, that sounds like you had a good time at Pine. All those fires up north bringing some smoke down there. For me, I flew around 2:30 in the mountains and stayed up a whopping 21 minutes AND seven seconds. While driving back down I saw the cummies over Wilcox and when I got there a Osprey was thermaling up the cliff. The Saffold brothers were ripping it up and what the heck, I decided to join in. Just as I was about to launch Skippy came up with Kirra and they were so cute and useful as they twanged me off. Another hour and a half later top landed sweetly and went home.

[brendanpegg]

Monica (tandem passenger) took over 200 pictures. Rather than pick and choose, I uploaded the whole works:

http://picasaweb.google.com/bpegg1/Moni ... hiefTandem