Practice Day
After arriving in Big Spring at around 2:30am I knew we wouldn't be getting up very early. As I settled in to bed, I saw a cricket under my sheets and had to shoo him off (in hind site I should have caught him and let him out. Just about the time I was going to bed, Larry and his truck pulled in. Shawn rolled in around 4 (I think), so I figured we might be getting up around 8:30am. Well 9:40 was more like it and the sleep was needed for the pratice day to begin with.
The motel has free breakfast (but not to later risers) so I figured it would be the truckstop. Most of the guys were up, some had already been to the truckstop and others were still going. Breakfast was buffet style. I mads the mistake of asking for salsa. It should have been called salt-sa, cause it was REALLY salty. I won't make that mistake again.
Weather looked like it had over-development potential (looking at the clouds). The BlipSpot was calling for top of the lift around 6k and a bit better later in the day. NWS said 50% chance of TS and isolated showers
Around 10:30 we made our way to the airport to setup, while a few pilots went shopping at the Super WalMart (man you can get lost in that place). As soon as we arrived I was looking for Rob Kells to see if I could get a ride on one of the new T2's. He hooked me up and brought out a new 140 (smaller than my 150 (but he said I really should be flying the smaller one anyway). I figured I should try and setup my own glider as well. The night before we dropped the gliders off in the hangar, when we opened the door to the hangar it was like a bunch of big butterflies (the hang gliders) had infested the place. From the looks of things we were the last ones to arrive (although I knew this wasn't true). Dropping the gliders off we were getting crickets and grasshoppers jumping all over us (it was kind of eary). Well, when I was dragging my glider out of the hangar in the AM, many of those crickets were hiding under the gliders we stashed in the hangar. For awhile I had them crawling everywhere. Once the glider was in the sun they left.
The T2 was a dream to put together (new gliders are all probably like this). The sail is very flat and looks a lot like the Moyes LightSpeed from the top. Rob told me about a few of the refinements and noted that the glider was tuned to take a small turn out of the glider and showed me the adjustments that had been made. He also mentioned that the sprogs were at factory height.
I moved to launch around 1:00pm (I think). The T2 tows very nicely and I had no trouble with the handling on tow ) although I could hear something rattling (probably the VG pulleys). Lift was weak, but consistent so staying up wasn't difficult. I checked the speed range and found the glider pitch very easy (not like my Talon) and could easily pull into 55mph. I did have a slight right turn and the glider seemed to want to wrap in a thermal when turning right. Left hand turns we're ok.
I hooked up with Cutter and Chris Smith right away at the south end of the runway and we climbed to around 5400. Even though I was on a smaller glider (with a turn) I felt I could thermal right with both of them. I did a few glides with Cutter (although I was above him) and with Chris. Going for a cloud further south I lost more altitude than I wanted to and around 4400 I turned around and headed back to the airport where I saw Gregg Kendall and thermaled (or attempted to) with him. Cutter also joined in and I missed the climb. The lift was turning off but I struggled for another 30 minutes before giving up. I decided to call it a day with about an hour flight. Coming back towards the hangar I aced the landing and felt good that I didn't slam the glider in since it did't belong to me. Overall impression was very favorable.
As soon as Phill Bloom came over to give me a hand he asked if I wanted to fly his glider, "sure, why not!", I said. I needed to drink some fluids since my camelback wasn't working all that well. I had to blow air into it and then suck really hard to get the water flowing. I'll fill it more tomorrow. After joking with a few people about destroying Phill's Glider I suited up again and jumped on the dolly. On the tow my feet hit the dolly as I came off otherwise everything else was fine. After gaining around 100 feet I realized Phill had no VG pulled on the glider which made the tow less than enjoyable (because of the pitch pressure). Once off tow his glider was a dream to thermal and when the VG was pulled and it was time to go fast, the lightspeed gave me a lot of confidence immediately. I was in the air around 1.5 hours when Erwin said that they were going to start serving dinner at the pilots dinner put on by the city of Big Spring. It was all the motivation I needed. Coming in I could see I was going to have a nice no wind landing and I could really see the gound spped was way up there as I pulled in to get down. At one point I thought I would have the landing go pretty well, but I flared a bit early and then dropped the nose pretty hard. Nothing broken but my pride. More later ........
The motel has free breakfast (but not to later risers) so I figured it would be the truckstop. Most of the guys were up, some had already been to the truckstop and others were still going. Breakfast was buffet style. I mads the mistake of asking for salsa. It should have been called salt-sa, cause it was REALLY salty. I won't make that mistake again.
Weather looked like it had over-development potential (looking at the clouds). The BlipSpot was calling for top of the lift around 6k and a bit better later in the day. NWS said 50% chance of TS and isolated showers
Around 10:30 we made our way to the airport to setup, while a few pilots went shopping at the Super WalMart (man you can get lost in that place). As soon as we arrived I was looking for Rob Kells to see if I could get a ride on one of the new T2's. He hooked me up and brought out a new 140 (smaller than my 150 (but he said I really should be flying the smaller one anyway). I figured I should try and setup my own glider as well. The night before we dropped the gliders off in the hangar, when we opened the door to the hangar it was like a bunch of big butterflies (the hang gliders) had infested the place. From the looks of things we were the last ones to arrive (although I knew this wasn't true). Dropping the gliders off we were getting crickets and grasshoppers jumping all over us (it was kind of eary). Well, when I was dragging my glider out of the hangar in the AM, many of those crickets were hiding under the gliders we stashed in the hangar. For awhile I had them crawling everywhere. Once the glider was in the sun they left.
The T2 was a dream to put together (new gliders are all probably like this). The sail is very flat and looks a lot like the Moyes LightSpeed from the top. Rob told me about a few of the refinements and noted that the glider was tuned to take a small turn out of the glider and showed me the adjustments that had been made. He also mentioned that the sprogs were at factory height.
I moved to launch around 1:00pm (I think). The T2 tows very nicely and I had no trouble with the handling on tow ) although I could hear something rattling (probably the VG pulleys). Lift was weak, but consistent so staying up wasn't difficult. I checked the speed range and found the glider pitch very easy (not like my Talon) and could easily pull into 55mph. I did have a slight right turn and the glider seemed to want to wrap in a thermal when turning right. Left hand turns we're ok.
I hooked up with Cutter and Chris Smith right away at the south end of the runway and we climbed to around 5400. Even though I was on a smaller glider (with a turn) I felt I could thermal right with both of them. I did a few glides with Cutter (although I was above him) and with Chris. Going for a cloud further south I lost more altitude than I wanted to and around 4400 I turned around and headed back to the airport where I saw Gregg Kendall and thermaled (or attempted to) with him. Cutter also joined in and I missed the climb. The lift was turning off but I struggled for another 30 minutes before giving up. I decided to call it a day with about an hour flight. Coming back towards the hangar I aced the landing and felt good that I didn't slam the glider in since it did't belong to me. Overall impression was very favorable.
As soon as Phill Bloom came over to give me a hand he asked if I wanted to fly his glider, "sure, why not!", I said. I needed to drink some fluids since my camelback wasn't working all that well. I had to blow air into it and then suck really hard to get the water flowing. I'll fill it more tomorrow. After joking with a few people about destroying Phill's Glider I suited up again and jumped on the dolly. On the tow my feet hit the dolly as I came off otherwise everything else was fine. After gaining around 100 feet I realized Phill had no VG pulled on the glider which made the tow less than enjoyable (because of the pitch pressure). Once off tow his glider was a dream to thermal and when the VG was pulled and it was time to go fast, the lightspeed gave me a lot of confidence immediately. I was in the air around 1.5 hours when Erwin said that they were going to start serving dinner at the pilots dinner put on by the city of Big Spring. It was all the motivation I needed. Coming in I could see I was going to have a nice no wind landing and I could really see the gound spped was way up there as I pulled in to get down. At one point I thought I would have the landing go pretty well, but I flared a bit early and then dropped the nose pretty hard. Nothing broken but my pride. More later ........
posted by Jeff Chipman at 5:22 AM
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