Ok, perhaps a little early for the demise of the season. Yesterday we did our first “Billy Burger Run”. Our west tow road (School House) just north east of town was the start point with pretty good cycles from the west. Mike was up first and I was blessed with Mia’s offer to test fly her VQ! (Mia decided to run the rig).
With a fresh west wind in both the forecast and reality we moved our towing operation to the seldom used School House Road, 2 miles ENE of town. Its a nice tow road but a little short (2 miles).
Devils were popping all around the area so I sent Mike to go find me some lift. He pinned off after a two mile tow and gradually climbed away and headed west (into a west wind!…. I’ve taught him well?) Not getting very high but encouraging for my flight.
Now… just a small list of challenges that started with my first flight on the VQ:
-broken shoelace (don’t you just hate that?) field mod and fixed.
-Radio not working (moved off frequency… and locked?) fixed.
-Lost my airspeed probe walking to the truck! (seems to be a problem with flying the VQ …. see previous posts 
)
-I then had to unclip to find my spare probe. (stashed in the nose) got my riser twisted when I clipped back in. fixed.
-Start the tow… Vario is awful quite…. sound is off. fixed in the air.
-Vario starts to fall down on its pivot… had to re-engineer the bracket after release. fixed
Top quality pre flight?
So, after all that… how does the VQ fly? I will write a full report later but for now it totally blew me away for how light and fast it rolled and handled. Once I got in the air I called Mike (who was struggling near Withrow) that it looked like a good day for a down wind dash to Wilbur airport and dinner at Billy Burgers (Ye old classic American dinning establishment…. a burger joint). I came up 30 ft short of 10,000ft, just couldn’t get there. Both Mike and I had some challenging wild air landing at the airport but all ended well. (The VQ lands sweet… as Mia nervously watched me land in the bouncy air)
Billy Berger’s to Park Lake for a quick dip (just before the sun went down) and back to Mansfield. The season ain’t over yet! (looks like we are flying today again)
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