Here in the Columbia Basin we are sitting under a bit of a weather high but an inversion has set in, pushing the top of usable lift down. It's not "real" hot and just enough surface winds that seem to scrub off the thermals before they get a chance to get powerful enough to bust through the inversion. Useable lift forecasts have dropped below 8000ft asl while theoretical thermal tops remains high (10,000 +). The net result is your lift is unreliable, often broken and you have to spend allot of time finding new lift and at the same time dealing with drift. So? what can you do about the weather..... nothing..... you just give it a shot and see what happens.
Mia and Randy where scheduled to fly, my turn to run the rig. Being a good "Tow-Master" I gave it my best sales pitch to encourage the team to do some flying, Randy was sold and took the bait. Mia was a sceptic (and familiar with my "blowing smoke" sales pitch) but she did decide to set up.
Randy towed first, took a nice tow up to 2000ft agl and started scratching with a 10mph south wind. Later I found out he released after running into a "goofy spot" on the drum.... a section of loose line that was improperly rewound the day before. No big deal but he decided to pin off to be safe.
It was pretty clear that the day was soft as Randy almost sunk out back at takeoff, so Mia decided to "bag-it" while Randy worked with what he had. He latched onto a big one and was climbing at 1000+fpm but it gave up at 7000ft asl so he headed toward the house in Mansfield. He landed at the house, not too impressed with the day so we all decided to trade the gliders in for towels at the beach and call it a day. Randy's Flight.
While Randy broke down, Mia and I took the tow vehicle a short distance out of town to pull all the line off of the winch (found nothing that would have caused any issues.... I think Randy cleared what ever was lurking on the drum!) We pulled all the line off (down to the backup) and with Mia standing on the road 5500 feet from the truck holding the recovery chute, I hit the rewind and kite the towline back onto the truck. The usual source of problems can be caused by letting the drum free wheel just prior to rewind, kind of like getting a birds nest on a fishing reel. Several big loops can form, then get covered over by the rewind. Most of the time they will just slip though and everything is fine, sometimes they can knot up and lock the towline blowing the weak link. Not a bad thing if your taking a greedy tow to 2000 ft! but not a good thing if your just off the truck!
Projects completed we set off with steaks and beer for Summer Falls for some R+R at the beach.
As usual, nobody down at Summer Falls. One sad point tho... the Park has been seeing more use this summer and with it has come the fact that people = garbage and abuse. It's always hard to understand why people don't take the time to look after such a beautiful place . We arrived finding barbeque pits were full "stuff" with people tossing plastic, cloths and what ever else they could find into the pits. Well not obvious at first glance, the park is definitely showing the abuse. We took the time to clean up one of the picknick areas, that we decided was the least gross... people can be pigs.
Summer Falls.... something to protect? :
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