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 :)

Boat towing

Thursday was a fun day, Jeff invited Andy and me up for some afternoon boat towing at Marble Falls, just West of Austin.

Jeff runs Fly Texas Hang Gliding School and uses myriad ways of teaching the art of flight.

This was my first time towing from a boat, I gotta say I loved it. Warm clear water, flying in swim shorts, pretty nice views. What's not to like.

It's neat watching the boat get smaller and smaller as you you ride the smooth air up.

With a little wind we were getting upto about 1200ft on tow. There was a little 

lift around, but I think most of it was being stolen by an approaching storm, and of course we are over a lake.

Landing on water is totally fun, very low stress, smooth and lightly refreshing :) 

We had been watching the radar and some over development to our south. After 4 flights it was time to get the equipment away. We were in good time before the gust front hit. Yeeha - good fun - Thanks Jeff.

Messing about with a windsurfer.

I tried Windsurfing way back when I was 14 or something like. I never got that good, but now living almost on a really inviting lake it'd be a waste not to play with it some more.

There's a put-in spot just 5 mins away and it's generally pretty windy (which is among many reasons I've not been flying much recently).

It's really nice to be able to go for a quick sail after work. And go cool off in this hot, humid environment. The water is pretty clear and a good temperature.

There's a fun crowd here giving me a ton of helpful advice and lending me stuff. I got brave enough to put the camera on the boom last attempt :)

Next I need to tack, jibe and water start. I've been having some spectacular crashes maybe I'll run some video ;)

A huge thanks to Zac for delivering my forgotten mast :)

Lock out on tow

A couple of weeks ago I had an experience I'd rather not repeat. I think there are some lessons that can be learned, so I'll share. In short it was a hang gliding launch that went wrong. I got away with it but just barely, I was exposed to far more risk than I was comfortable with...

The day seemed fairly harmless, wind was SE on the ground at 5-15mph a little gusty - but that's Texas. Above 200ft it was probably S @ 20mph. Air was unusually cold for the wind direction. I had already taken one flight.

I came out of the cart very smoothly, level and perfect airspeed. Just as I was starting to relax into the tow, I got whacked on the right wing. That made me climb and yaw significantly left. With full right weight-shift I came back into line (though I was still high). Just then the second surge hit, this lift was a lot more turbulent.

I went to pin of with my right hand, I was already too high, and surging upward, right after taking my hand off the bar the right wing rapidly lifted.

I was happy that Joel beat me too it and gave me the rope. As you can see from the sequence below, I had quite a bit of energy from the sling shot effect, but also with the air being pretty radical. Even off line I continued to be pitched up despite pulling in. All to soon I was without airspeed in a bad sideslip, I think the images are 2 seconds apart.So the sideslip was about 4 seconds (that's a lot - I was begining to think I would side slip to the ground).

The nose did come around as I dumped the VG, and I was flying low right back into the air that had caused all this, downwind and I was dragging the the 180ft tow line. I was a pretty unhappy chap!

I think some of the nasty air actually helped get my glider back into the wind for a no step (check your underware) landing. I'm not for a moment going to claim full authority over the glider. From roll out  to kissing the ground was less than a minute.

So what can be learned from all this ? We certainly are exposed to a higher level of risk from 20-80ft on tow. Are there things that increased my exposure? After having mulled over this a while I'd say there were three different possibly companding factors.

1. I think I was flying with too much VG (4/5) This compromised my roll control.

2. I had a camera on my sprog, and I've noticed before at high airspeed, the handling does weird stuff (probably on acount of the zipper being open and air pressure changing the camber).

3. In Luling we tow at higher airpseeds, this narrows the envelope that a glider should be in behind the tug. Which in turn will reduce the amount of turbulence that can be handled.

I think each of these factors on there own are innocuous, but combined had a dramatic result. I'd rather not do that again.

Quintana

A few pilots from the Austin Area took off for Quintana last week. I travelled down with Nate, and met up with Dan Dave and Mark along the way.

The wind was picking up and was close to soarable, so we set right up.

By the time I was ready, so was the wind... for the Tandem Falcon anyway 229sq ft of flying boat. It can be a handful at 30ft msl, in 25mph winds.

The air had some lumps in it, but was generally friendly. The dune is about 20ft high so there is little margin for exploration.

Passing was fun. 

At one point we had three gliders in the air, which I was impressed by. Check out Nate's blog for more pictures and stories. http://slaveofgravity.com Thanks for the ride Nate, and Y'all for the site intro. Good flying !

Easter 2013

It's Easter already in 2013, I went up to visit with Isaiah and Christi. We checked out this local resort, it has quite a view over Lake Travis.

A couple days later Heidi and I had a pretty good ride around Pace Bend. I think we went around twice. The riding is nice, the views are fairly typical of the "Hill Country".

There has not been any rain to speak of for a few months. The rocks are are a little loose and there's plenty of dust.

On the way home we stopped in at Willie Nelson's roadhouse - Poodies hilltop bar and grill for some refreshment.

We enjoyed some nice BBQ at the Salt Lick, with the Carew Family. Then hit the lake Sunday morning before the clouds rolled in. A pleasant weekend. Now I'm ready for some air.

Big Bend

Last week was Spring Break, so we took off to Big Bend National Park. The first night we stayed outside the park since camping was all full. Spring break is the busiest part of the season, camping seems first come, first served. But there is always room at the Stillwell camp, just outside the northeast of the park.

The big draw of Big Bend is hiking in the Chisos Mountains, an old volcano with  stacks of interesting geology. You drive into the crater which is the Chisos Valley, there is camping there but it is very popular. The valley is at 5400ft so it is considerably cooler than the rest of the park.

Most of the trails start from the visitors center. We chose to hike up Emory Peak. At 7825ft it's the highest in the park and has awesome views all the way up.

There's also a fair bit of shade from Oak, Pinon Pine and Cedar on the walk - which won't stop you getting sun burned, but does take the edge off the heat.

It was a pretty easy walk up and back, there is a loop that adds about 3 miles around the far side, but we were a little short on time, wanting to catch the sunset back at camp.

We stayed down at the Rio Village camp, which was nice and toasty at 1850ft. Mexico lies across the ankle deep Rio Grande.

Sunset over Boquillas del Carmen, and the hot springs just this side of the river.

The hot springs were such a delight after the stroll up the mountain. We went back in the morning to see what they looked like.

We also took a wander around around Boquillas Canyon.

It's easy to see how this place can flash flood. Huge dessert expanses draining through these narrow carved canyons going from 4000ft to 2000ft in just a few miles.

Prickly cactus near sunset.

Another day another hike, just a short one this time... Right ? Again starting from Chisos Valley.

Well maybe not as short as we thought... Somehow one way distance got confused with round trip.

No matter it was still only 5 miles and the lost mine trail was spectacular.

I think the mine was for mercury, though there's plenty of iron too.

On our way out of the park we went by the Santa Elena overlook. This is where the Rio Grande emerges from the canyon.

Rafting is offered here when there is sufficient water. Its a 6 mile canyon, I've added that to my want to do list. We camped in Terlingua Ghost town, seeing some Petroglyphs in the morning. Leaving town looking right perhaps Terlingua Ranch offers some flying opportunities? The other cliffs I saw on the way to Alpine belong to Nine-point mesa Anheuser-Busch.