A beautiful Saturday in the mountains

[Marge]

[attachment=0]image.jpg[/attachment]Great day in the mountains. Walked the St Mary's Lz and Parma Lz with our newbie john and Bryan. Then met up with the guys to head up to skyport in the eagle van. We were joined by 2 of the Dave's (hogan and Bader), Keith, Karill and our visiting pilot friend CJ from BC. Willy had already headed up for some HG fun. Saw birds soaring in the way up the hill. It's was blowing straight in lightly when we arrived. Mr Bader was our wind tech and waited till the cycles were blowing in strong enough to launch. He got up and headed to the thermal factory and then the antennas. Everyone had great launches. Kieth and hogan spent quite a bit of time thermalling at the antenna. There was nice lift below the round house and Bryan was able to thermal for while on his first flight. John caught some good lift over the Lz and thermaled there for quite a while. Cj got the house thermal and got above launch and had a great time in the our Santa Barbara thermals. A couple of the guys went up for round 2 and had another great flight. Congratulations and welcome to the tribe Bryan and john. Great work up there.[attachment=0]image.jpg[/attachment]

[gracecab]

Thanks for the report marge. From the weather at Elings im not surprised the thermals were booming up there...sounds like a blast. i had a fun time playing in the higher elings hill and got about half way to the main launch once... i looked up and sure enough Chad was high above me back there ... i think i got the back end of his thermal..lol... forget the hawks just find chad and launch!

[pengoquin]

Friday wasn't to shabby either. Timo was the first off and he made it look good, over launch and onto the R&R. I found no love at launch, headed out towards the turn out and then onto the Antenna Farm. Finally infront of the A/F it was working a bit and my new Alpina 2 took full advantage of what lift there was. Played around for a while and found the ceiling to be around 28-2900. The inversion held firm and then it started to OD. To stay out of the white room it was a good time to head out. Although I was a little low for the beach, a nice tail wind and a great glide, got me there with plenty of altitude to spare. After taking in the aerial sights of the city I packed up and strolled out to the Santra Barbara Shellfish Co on the wharf. Time for a lunch of lobster bisque, whole lobster and some very tasty wine, this took care of that Groupon. My ride was still soaring over Elings, so we arranged to meet at the Kalyra tasting room. A short walk to SB's urban wine walk and I found myself enjoying a tasting at one of my favorite tasing rooms. Chad joined me a short time later, we relaxed and enjoyed the wine, then he gave me a ride to my car at Parma. A perfect day of Santa Barbara paragliding, got to love it!