Luling to Chris's

Good flying day yesterday, Danny and Nate rallied Jeff from Fly Texas to tow us up. Goal was Chris's up near Georgetown, with a couple of turn points to clear the Austin Airspace. It's about 64 miles or so. I flew with my spot tracker, I love the convenience of it. Oliver our retrieve could track me easily on his smart phone. This is what it looks like.

With one thing and another we were slow getting going, I didn't go on course till nearly 5pm. Nate and Danny were a little way ahead. Climbs were quite slow, especially low under 3k.

I don't think any of us really got up to cloudbase until just short of Bastrop. I got a climb to near 7k, and the flight got considerably easier from there on. Unfortunately Danny got drilled just before there, but worked his way along through the hardest section.

Nate diligently flew the task I had set to avoid the airspace. Alas it went into a blue hole over Bastrop, and Nate went down just passed there.

I totally cheated the turnpoints by a few miles - sort of justifying it because I was behind, and had all the airspace programmed into my GPS. This kept me under the cloud street, which got me most of the remainder of the way to Chris's. The flight in was pretty buoyant and smooth, and there were still good climbs to be had at 7:30pm.

This is what the flight looks like with the airspace in Google earth. I use airspace files from Lloyd Bailey - find them here : www.lloydbailey.net/airspace.html . I haven't yet spent the time to figure airspace on the 6030, but I did put together a gpx file for the club since we all have a Garmin.

Basically I looked up the co-ords of the airspaces on Sky Vector .com Then found out the radii of the various airspace classes. Using Mapsource I put a proximity circle around center and traced the circle as a track. The track can then be uploaded. I'm sure its the caveman way of doing it, please leave a comment if you have some advise :)

Thanks to Nate for figuring out the logistics of a tow and retrieve - and the life saving sandwich, thanks to Jeff for the tow(s). Thanks to Danny for lettings us use his luxurious truck :)