August 10th, Randy and Mia head out to the tow site and its Hot and Blue!… well sort of…
A strategically narrow band of high cloud was going to put the curse on the day, parking a shadow over L-Road for the all important morning heating. We had very good soaring numbers for the day but the cloud shaded out a massive area around the tow road. Randy and Mia were setup ready to go but we had to wait for some sun.. it was almost 1:30 when Randy climbed aboard for the first tow. Typical north north winds (when we get an imbedded high pressure) meant he was going for north tow… always a low tow. At just over 1000agl he pinned off right at the highway and started scratching. I did a few runs up and down the road under him to try and break something off… eventually he started nice climb out to 8000ft asl and was on his way south to Saint Andrews.
Next up was Mia… or at least that was the plan. First up, Radio trouble. We thought we had earlier problem licked but we should have more thoroughly test her radio. Turns out the radio could receive if you using another radio sitting right beside her radio, move 50 feet away and she could not receive….fortunately we had the back-up radio in the truck, quick change and the first problem was solved. Next…….. up on the truck, down the road to stage, go through the pre-launch check and ooooops…. no airspeed probe in her Flytec 6030. If there is one thing you should never do flying a rigid wing in big thermal air is fly without airspeed information. We looked everywhere, tried to come with a alternative solution but in the end, Mia agreed that enough problems had cropped up that it would be bad Mojo to fly so she bagged if for the day.
Turned out Randy was struggling, he managed to get to Wilson Creek but was having to cut the flight short and try to come back. He got shot down for some dirt tasting just SE of Hartline.
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