Friday Fun!

[SA]

It looked like the soaring would start to happen around 11ish, and things had dried out leaving no threat of things OD’ing so we opted for the 10am meet at Parma. We loaded up the Eagle van with a good size crew and headed up to launch.

We arrived to find very light cycles, but there was still a nice temperature difference. We had two more new recent graduates (Big Dave & Cindy) up there for their first high flights from Skyport, and Larry and Dave were ready to huck more turns after their first day experience at Skyport yesterday.

Larry decided to be our wind technician. He was hungry for more thermaling after flying for over 2 hours yesterday on his first high flight. He had a nice launch in a light cycle, but there wasn’t much to work in the house thermal. He got a nice glide and started to work weak lift at the RH spine but after hanging there for 10 minutes in zeros he headed out to the monastery and then on to Parma. He found a great climb between the monastery and Parma and climbed to launch level. He stayed over Parma thermaling for almost an hour.

After Larry let the crew know it was on people started hucking and everybody connected. We didn’t have a single sledder in the group. Kev, Ty, Marge, Marite, Morgan, Cracka, Brian, Raphael, Dave (on his second high flight), and first time Skyport pilots Big Dave and Fullerton all hucked loads of turns and thermaled their brains out.

I rallied the Eagle van back down to Parma to pick everybody up for round two. Marge, Brian, Marite, Larry, Big Dave, and Fullerton were all game for another round. Dave from Florida was nice enough to volunteer to drive the van down so I could get some air time.

The cycles were nice at launch and Marite, and Marge climbed out in the house thermal. Once again everybody who hucked connected out front and got much higher than pilots had earlier in the day out at the RH and Antenna farm. Fullerton had that thing up on a tip as she hit a ripper and cored it up to the rest of the crew who were enjoying the view from well above the Antenna Farm/RH zone.

I chucked off at around 2pm and started to climb out at launch. Zippy came over from EJ bowl and joined me in the climb. Terry Taggart and Zippy had launched from EJ Bowl earlier. Zippy and I made the glide over to the factory and his HG was impressive. The speed was amazing. We thermaled up there together then made a move back to the RR with about 3750. We came into the RR and had nice climbs and got up to about 4000. I made a move back to the factory and zippy ripped by me and arrived first at the factory. We had some more fun cranking turns at the factory before heading for the beach.

I watched zippy gracefully connect loops and other sweet aerobatics moves over the water. I was yelling and hollering as I watched him get after it. He set it up over the beach low and was heading down wind ripping along for quite a while. Then he pushed out and banked it up 180 degrees for a sweet landing.

I landed with Zippy and Terry T at the beach as well after taking a tour to Ledbetter. I counted 10 kite boarders out ripping at Ledbetter. I had my kite gear in the van, and made a move with Marite to go get some but the wind was a bit too weak.

The second flight was the flight of the day. The cycles were much better, and pilots were getting higher after 2pm than pilots had earlier in the day. The new Eaglets were stoked to huck some turns and work all the different areas on the flight plan from Skyport. Everybody made it two Parma once again and had nice landings.

It’s going to continue to heat up this weekend. Hopefully there is still a little bit of juice left for the rest of the sky tribe to get up there and huck some turns.