Some Airtime!....(July 13th)..

We awoke to blue skies over the Mansfield area and cumulous development surrounding the area. Looking off in the direction of the Chelan Butte, there was Q's that were based no higher then 4000asl.... and despite the strange looking conditions XC skies was advertising 8-9000 cloud base with light SW winds. As it turned out the cloud base was dead on. The winds on the other hand were a little stiffer then the 5-10 mph.

Nic Voss was our "Tow-Mister" for the day. Nic is an old time Hang Glider pilot (Nic, sorry about the "old" comment ;-)  that has retired from flying but has regularly joined us in Mansfield to lend his services as our winch operator and enjoy some holiday time with old friends (Sun and Scotch).  Today was his last day and with a turn for the better in the weather his services were very much appreciated.

The first Q's of the day gave away an obvious southwest wind and while a little on the low side things were looking good!

Nic towed me up first to test the waters and after a strong tow to 2000agl I pinned off into 500 up and was on my way west to Waterville.  Unfortunately, Nic who had previously praised the performance of our tow line recovery chute.... suffered a bad chute and was forced to go for a walk...  When a chute fails, you have a choice, try to drag it in (usually the death of the chute) or walk out to the towline end and remove the chute and go back to the rig and rewind till you can remount the chute ( not a pleasant task out in wild sage) . I was thankful Nic decided to walk but it did delay Mia's start which was about an hour and a half behind me. Oh well, the perils of towing.

In the air, my tip to Waterville was slow (measuring between 12 and 18 mph sw winds). Solid climbs and good cloud streets made the task doable.  As I turned at Waterville, Mia was up and away and slowly working her way toward Withrow.

Mia's Lifts Off....

Meanwhile I pushed around the remainder of 128km FAI triangle. 

Flying west of Dry Falls:

The day had a real edge to it with strong lift and bouncy spring-like air, It was cool... in fact cold!.. very strange for July 13th.

The late start for Mia made here decided to cut short her drive to the west and  eventually both Mia and I landed back at L-Road with  pretty strong winds (gusting 10 to 18 mph) and lots of activity.

Fortunately, Nic was right on que, and was there to assist breakdown (I get nervous handling the VR in strong winds... a helping hand is always welcome)

We ended the day with one last trip to Park Lake (for Nic's vacation) refreshments and a swim. Then back to Mansfield where Nic capped the evening off with a fantastic chicken dinner followed with our traditional  Scotch.... wow... life is good. 

Mia's Flight and My flight

Tomorrow is not looking good with another wave of "over the Cascades" weather. Still, its looking like there is still some potential over the next week.... fingers crossed.

Road Trip....

We blew off our efforts yesterday. Forecast included thunderstorms, when Q's started forming the tops had imbedded cap clouds and wave was evident. Did not look good till Thursday so Mike headed back to work, and we continued to be patient (waiting for prime soaring conditions).

So what to do when bored? Road trip of course! Project: explore Palouse Falls. Our curiosity with this little wonder was spurred on by a Banff Film Festival and a short film involving Tyler Bradt a Kayaker that shot these fall in Washington state (The Video ). Reported to be the biggest Kayak drop (180ft?) We had no idea this little water fall was in our back yard so off we went to explore.

It was a 600km Round trip from Mansfield but worth every km. Can't imagine what inspired Bradt to run this falls.....

 

The upper rapids:

Traveling misfits:

Great road trip, the Columbia Basin is truly a marvel. Weather may improve....Promising Wed?....

Martin

2011 Mansfield Summer Encampment (July 11th)

There's noth'n you can do about the weather!

The nice thing about the weather in central Washington is, even when its bad... its better then the coast. Now, this is not to say the weather has been bad, we just have not managed the epic conditions that make this place rock. Lots of high cloud, lots of quirky conditions. The eastern areas across Banks Lake have been pulling very poor forecasts, hence very little inspiration to head east and open up our triangle attempts.

I've managed some triangles, 180, 150, 100, all with challenging circumstances (and I got caught out down south toward the Beezly hills). Mia had a nice little 50 and has been caught for some out-landings. Mike, a new VR pilots has been teaching all about how to fly my VR, guess I'm going to need to buy a sailplane to keep out in front of him.

Randy also enjoyed a few local flights and finally (on his last day with us) plunged east across Banks Lake on a murky high overcast day, only to have his zipper blow out, forcing him down near Hartline (Randy's Bank Lake Crossing. )

If your interested in any of the places we are flying, you can check out our live Spot Tracks:

Mia and Martin

We also post our flights up on the OLC's:

Mia's OLC and Martin's OLC

(You will probably note several trips down to Park Lake!)

Today looks a bit iffy but I think we will try and put 3 rigid's up to see if we and do some triangle work in the Mansfield area. The next few day have some Thunderstorm activity and south winds so it looks like we will be working on our swimming strokes.... oh well, better then working!) We have another 10 days to go....

Martin

Life and Death

Not trying to be dramatic or sensational, just the truth. I recently participated in paragliding advanced manoeuvres clinic and found myself getting, well... as the expression goes.... "over my head". I posted a incident report on the West Coast Soaring Club web site that pretty much describes the event. The nut shell version is, well flying my Ozone Delta (my first season on this wing) I had a stall manoeuvre go bad... very bad. Immediately on entry I entered multiple riser twists and things rapidly went for shit. You can watch the Video and judge for your self.

Under no circumstances am I going to say the event has not shaken my confidence nor will I say that I coolly fought my way out of the predicament. I was a passenger simply trying to survive. I will say fear was not a factor, more the fact that I was shocked that things could go so badly so quickly.

You could say that allot went very wrong but I would like to think that just enough went right to have a positive outcome. Over water, half a chute (better then none?) half a glider (even though it was tied to one ankle ;-).

Life and Death? Yes.... but I was not going to give up. I'm bravely look forward to next years SIV... this time with two chutes?

I will also say, stalling a paraglider is quite possibly the most dangerous manoeuvre a new paraglider pilot can perform. It is chaotic, it is unpredictable. Do your research on the net you will find plenty of examples of stalls gone bad. One thing is for sure, not a manoeuvre to be taken without respect.

BTW, 2 hours after my "event" I was nervously "back in the saddle" on Mia's Gin XS Sprint, performing another 5 stalls... some not so pretty but all were successful.

Fly safe.

Staying Legal and doing the 150

One of my "goal" flights for the Fraser Valley is to achieve a 150km FAI triangle. Its a bit of a tough nut to crack as there is always one leg of the triangle that chokes up the length of the attempt and causes the FAI triangle to be shorter then the distance flown. What it comes down to is being able to get far enough north and far enough south on the western edge of the task area that a true 150 can be had.

Spring offers a few days every year to the attempt, on May 9th I was given a chance. This year had a new set of challenges tossed in... airspace changes. Most of the western edge of the task is limited to 6500 asl (over 6500asl is Class C with transponder requirements). Well its rare to get these sorts of altitudes in the Fraser Valley, its exactly those kinds of days make the 150 possible. 

The reduced altitudes make my run out to Stave Lake fast but the a lack of clouds at my Western turn point make me turn and run east sooner then I wanted.  There was so much development in the area I did not want to risk getting caught.  My second turn point at Hope (Dog Mtn) was also clipped short as I ended up getting worried about getting out of Hope for the return leg (and getting stuck at Hope Gliding club).  To get out of Hope I made a dash to the south side of the valley East of Laidlaw. From there it was an easy trek west.

(South side of the Valley, NE of Jones lake)

(Mount Cheam)

 

The 150 was still ppossible but it would mean flying deep south in the Chilliwack valley. Unfortunately, development in the area put the task out of reach. I did a dash part way into the Valley to stretch the leg but was getting snowed on, so I retreated back to the Fraser Valley.

Again, the new airspace rules gave me a new challenge. Last year I could have crossed back to Woodside without any sort of restrictions. This year you have to duck your head down and stay below 5500asl. I arrived back at Woodside with plenty of height. The net FAI triangle was 137km, perhaps there will be a few more chances before summer? Here is a link to The Flight . 

OTA.....

After my last post, it looked like Winter was done. Well apparently mother nature had other ideas. The weather has turned cold, the local ski hills got nailed with 30 to 40 cm's of new snow (fortunately most of it stayed away from Woodside!) The drop in temp has me thinking about something that is non flying related, a little project that I took on over the winter.

OTA ?  Simply put, the art of pulling your television signals out of the air using an antenna. OTA = Over the Air.

It all started when I had to replace my old television with one of these new fangle flat panel jobs. During the setup process I scanned my cable feed channels... of course none of them were in the HD the TV was capable of....except one. Seeing the HD got me thinking this ain't bad. I then decided to find out what it cost to get my cable company to deliver the HD. They suck. For the amount I watch TV, the cable companies don't deserve the coin that they were trying to hose me for.  In the process I tripped over the fact that of full HD signals being transmitted in the big cities, for FREE.

In end, there is plenty of info out there on the topic. My main source was:  Digital Forum

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=81

Next, I did some research using a online tool from a  web site called TV Fool ( http://tvfool.com/ ). Next, up went a mast and a small commercially manufacture antenna called a Clearstream4:

 

The results, a solid fix of 5 local digital channels (and another half dozen fair analog signals). 3 of the digital channels offer full HD (the nice stuff like, Hockey Night in Canada! and CTV's coverage of the Olympics!... all that a good Canadian needs).  The thing with digital signals, You either get a solid picture or you don't. No more bad twisted analog signals to try and coax something in.

The signals (if you've got signals to "get") are free. If you want to build your own antenna, they can be built for next to nothing (especially if you've got a bunch of old hang gliding junk kicking around, here is a photo album of my home brew:  http://picasaweb.google.com/towforce/DBGH# ).

I put $200 into a store bought rig (with amp) and I also built a free rig out of junk. Both preformed good enough .  Your TV needs to have a ATSC to deal with the digital encoding, most of the new sets do.

The funny thing is TV is such a time sucking device that really has taken over and wasted so much of our lives. I surf my short list of stations and if I see nothing it turn off.  (Think about the times you've surfed up and down your 50+ channels and nothing's on?)

If your fed up with Cable bills, give OTA a look.

Man I hope the flying season starts soon ;-)

And yet another year begins.... 2010

Looks like we have survived our winter and look forward to another season of aviation.  The little local event called "Winter Olympics" has come and gone and seemed like a pretty good time to dust off the wings and head to the hills.  Something called global warming has helped keep the local hills free of snow.... perhaps more accurately stated, "El Nino" and its warm ocean currents put up a challenging fight for the host of this years Olympic events!

With the warm winter Mia and I had picked a few days here and there to get out on the Paragliders. Even managed to scratch some airtime but Saturday, March 6th seemed like a good time to bust out the "Big Bird".

It was a scratchy hard work kind of flight but enough of a challenge to start getting the feel back. Managed close to 2 hours and a few nice speed runs through launch, ending in a so -so near no wind landing.  Mia decided to stick to the Paraglider until after her latest final exams (Mid April) but managed close to an hour.

Lots of rusty pilots out re-learning the art of aviation. Have to admit that after my Paraglider mid air a few years back I trust absolutely NO one while thermaling. Especially in the spring!

One of the rusty pilots out was my brother in law Ken, with his new (used) acquisition.... the ATOS VX:

 

Its a bloody Big Bird! My VR is no longer the local king of span! Ken is going to take some time getting used to his new wing but I think once he gets the handle on packing the behemoth around he will soon be enjoying the beast.

We head down to Mansfield Easter long weekend to chase out the mice, clean up the property and sump out the basement (if it needs it ;-) We will drag down the "Bags" just in case the Chelan's Airport Ridge is working. Other then that its more the act of getting away that we look forward to.... and there are not many places more "away from it all", then Mansfield WA.