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Saturday, 9/25/04 Here it was, late September fog. Seemed like the time to try a Plowshare flight. I had made many fruitless attempts at taking my Falcon to the Burger Barn but the weather seemed good and you can't do it if you don't try so off we went. We made a pit stop just before the parking area and it was there that I left my nice Oakley sunglasses on the roof of the car. When we went back we found it's remnants. No glass, and lots of scrapes. I wonder if the glasses were staring at the semi-truck fearless to the last. So on to launch we went as it was getting late. Jeff Stevens was there when we arrived almost all set up and the winds were about 7 mph so we set up fast. The first off from our group was a Paraglider pilot named Dave Salmon. He was a good pilot and when I drove last time he made it to the barn so I wanted to keep my eye on him. It looked light and weak but I didn't want to wait anymore and took off shortly after, and sunk out, but caught a little something and scratched my way back up. At 600 over I saw Skippy, John and Jeff pile off like lemmings and we proceeded to work the small, weak thermals that were averages 100-200 up. Jeff found a better core and John and I joined him. Skippy came over later but we had 800 feet on her and then the drift started pushing us back into the valley. Jeff punched upwind and it was still working. I did the same but progress was slow and I thought, "why am I fighting a headwind wind I should be drifting with this into the valley." John Hesch came back to launch a little lower after he had some,... technical problems. He was having trouble zipping up his harness so he reached into the harness ring and zipped down to his knees. John has large thumbs though and found his thumb wedged into the ring. He was flying one handed on his Lightspeed and I would imagine he had a sense of extreme urgency. That was the case as his thumb started bleeding as he tried to rip it out. It was a good thing he didn't have a pocket knife on him or we would be reading about another amputee, hero. He put his chin on the base bar and with his other hand managed to free his bloody thumb. When the thermal from launch finally stopped giving me zero sink I was cruising down the road at 35 mph in my Falcon. Skip, got sink when she tried to go back to launch for some more altitude and was on glide behind me but a few thousand lower. I like smooth flights and this one was very smooth with no lift for a long time. As I hit the gap I was getting very low but knew if I turned around for a landing I would be drilled immediately in the West wind so I kept going. Caught some scraps in the lower foothills just above the deck and just dribbled along for quite some time. Finally got to 5,700 and glided to Chalk. At around 4,200 I was leaving Chalk for a landing area and then hit some smooth lift that was moving around quite a bit. Kevin Carter had told me to try flying almost hands off and let the glider search out the lift. Be a dope on a rope. So when I did that the glider felt much lighter and more responsive and it just climbed and climbed on it's own. Every few circles I would give it one bump and then let it go and topped off about 7,600 and near the face of Caliente Peak. Started heading for the Barn and John Hesch appeared 600 feet below me and was diving for goal. I hit some more lift and got to 8,250 and followed his lead. Skippy had landed at Spanish Ranch, and was grabbing the car. Jeff had landed in the sink hole just before Chalk. Dave came on the radio and was on Foothill road with a 26.5 mile flight having worked the foothills all the way. I wanted to go as far as I could since I was in the Falcon XC contest, so I glided on. I was going to head for the foothills but decided to just punch up wind as far as possible and land on the 166 for easy retrieve. When I landed I took my helmet off and said, "FINALLY!" 29.3 miles in light smooth lift with a nice tail wind in 2.5 hours. Tony |
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