Today I handed the keys for the winch over to Randy. It would be his first solo introduction to operating our winch. He took several training tows last year and had "volunteered" to do his turn at the wheel.
Conditions have taken a real change with some sort of system passing through overnight. Early in the day we had development over the Cascades and the Methow valley. Not much wind in the forecast and various soaring forecasts did call for some pretty good lift.
Randy gave me a real good tow to 2000ft agl when he got his first initiation to being a "Tow-Master". The towline chute failed on release (we refer to the failure as "chute is snivelling") Some times the chute will pop open.... sometimes not. As it turned out, it when all the way to the ground. As I climbed in smooth cool lift, Randy had to trudge back down the road (I estimated at least 3000 ft), unclip the chute and trudge back in the hot sun to rewind the dropped line. Oh well first tow resulted in the first pilot away!
Next Mia towed up. Again Randy got his initiation... Mia took a weak link failure at 900ft agl. She almost connect but had to land back at the setup for a perfect no wind landing. Randy was quickly back, but this time Mia released at 900ft agl in strong lift and was up and away.
By this time I was heading west nearing Waterville (averaging 8500ft asl in the thermals). About 75 miles north toward the Cascades there was spectacular over development. It caused me to keep a very careful eye on the conditions. Fortunately it stayed north for the whole day.
Mia was soon out on her course heading Withrow, I turned Waterville and was on my way to the SE. My route brought me into the "blue" and things began to fall apart quite rapidly. Soon I was clinging to every thermal trying to make my planned turnpoint and head back to the tow site to the north. Meanwhile, Mia was enjoyed some nice climbs to over 9000ft asl and decided not to venture in my direction to the east. Instead she back tracked toward the tow site under a solid line of Q's.
After my turnpoint, I ended up real low and drifting north up the tow road (as low as 3600 ft asl /1000ft agl). Eventually, my luck came back and I managed to arrive back at the start meeting Mia at 8000ft als. From there we both took our separate ways back to the Mansfield to arrive at the house for good landings and got to take down on the green grass of the front yard.
Nice to see some Q's for change.
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