On the last day, my goal was to not get sunburned, not get sweaty, pick up my wing and make it to the airport on time. I succeeded at 3/4 of these goals.

We woke up and made the last breakfast of the trip. The weather forecast was for absolutely no lift anywhere, so the people interested in flying resigned themselves to a day of sledies. (sled run, just going down, no up) We drove up the Rim of the World Highway (a very presumptuous name if you ask me) towards Crestline to see a man about a wing.

You may recall that the day before I had given my multiple thousand dollar wing to a man that I’d only just met, knew only by association from others and who was a professional paraglider/hang glider. It was said that he repaired wings in his house, and it seemed worth the risk. I walked into his house – pieces of old wings lay littered around, 4 sewing machines, a lot of other junk and my little guy was lying in the middle of the repair room. He showed me the job he’d done, and it seemed “ok” to me. Not that I know anything about anything. I gave him some money and he claimed that it was to much. I shrugged – he’d saved me from either sending my wing to Switzerland to Icaro, or driving to Mission several times to pay a guy a lot more money to fix it. I could afford to pay this dude more than he thought he was worth.

Interestingly (or maybe he’s just this friendly), I feel like my overpayment then bought us a guided tour of the Crestline launch just above and behind the Marshall launch that we’d been using for a few days already. 3 of the guys decided to launch from there, but the rest of us drove back down to Marshall. What I wanted from a flight – no fuss, no muss, no retrievals or out-landings. If I went from launch to landing in 7 minutes, then so be it. With a flight leaving from California that night there wasn’t a lot of room for error, so I took the route of no error.

Easy launch, easy flight and easy landing is what I got. Unfortunately while packing up my stuff for the last time on the trip, I worked up a sweat. >.< Damnit, now I was going to have to sit in that for a few hours on the plane.

I calculated that I more than doubled my total airtime with this trip. I previously had an estimated 7.95 hours. I gained an additional 8.75 of them!

We said our good byes and drove to LAX. I haven’t been in a lot of airports, but I can say with no doubt in my mind that LAX is the worst I’ve ever been in. With it’s massive loop, incomprehensible directions, important checkpoints strewn randomly about in hallways (baggage X-ray machines, line-ups for said machine, random check points, security check point) and the sorriest excuse for a selection of international departure restaurants that I’ve seen, I can’t recommend spending much time there.

As we took off, the fog was really low. We flew into it and then above it. The clouds stretched out forever across the horizon, looking like a beautiful frozen wasteland below us. As we turned, a mountain range came into view and the clouds looked like they were spilling out over it like a waterfall. Add in an amazing orange, red and yellow sunset across the sky, and you have a recipe for a gorgeous view.

I took Monday off work to hang out with Miranda and decompress. Tomorrow I’m back at work. Before I left I was sad to leave my project for a week and a bit. Now I’m sad to go back!

Day 8 was a decent day, but it looked like it was going to fail.

We started the day with the idea of this XC plan that we’d planned out a couple days ago. The forecast was for high lift and lots of it, more than enough to get to what we wanted to do.

We drove over to the site, and since it’s Saturday the place was littered with other pilots. I’m told you can learn a lot from listening to them, but I found that my brain is full, can I go home please teacher? We waited. I didn’t want to fly with 15 other people at the same time, since my experience at Blossom Valley with cramped quarters was still with me, so I started getting set up to go. One of my housemates counseled that I should be patient, and that they would all dissipate quickly. We waited.

About 2pm someone decided to launch and sunk out pretty quick. The atmosphere got a little tenser as people started to think that the planned epic day wasn’t going to happen, that the forecast had been wrong and that everyone up on launch would only get a sled ride or two.

Probably about 2:30ish the launch had mostly cleared out, as people sat around waiting some more with their gear packed away, or had launched and prayed that they would be the ones that found the lift out there. Bob and Joe had already gone and sunk, so I figured that now would be a good time. Guy was launching at about the same time, and Jeff went just before me. I found a little bit, but nothing worth writing home about. Remembering my out-landing experience with the head wind from the day before, I started towards the LZ a little earlier this time – besides, I’d found better lift more consistently on the other side of the east ridge called The Regionals.

I get over there and I’m a little close to the ridge, but I’ve got the wind in my favour and lots of room to escape, so I poke about looking for lift. And man did I find it. About 15 minutes later I’ve risen up to 1962m (my highest flight yet), and at one point I had sustained lift of 3.5m/s. I’ve never seen that number on my vario – it takes an average over the last 10 seconds.

Eventually the lift dies down a bit and Jeff, Guy and I are flying around looking for some more. We spread out in this lovely little search pattern and wait. I find a little, and so do they, in a different location. If we’d been closer together, my story for the evening might have been a little different.

I poked around a bit, but eventually sunk down to 1100 and decided to head out to the LZ. On my way there, I found a really nice section of lift to about 1450, which gave me enough height to head back to launch and top-land again. I was starving at this point! Need to put my snacks in an easier to access location…

I mentioned a few days ago that my wing had a tear in it? We ran into a guy on launch earlier that morning who did repairs, so I handed my wing off to him for the evening. Going to go pick it up this morning sometime. Here’s hoping!

So Guy and Jeff…they found lift up to 1800-1900m again and decided to go try out this XC plan that we’d had. Apparently at one point Guy turned back and Jeff decided to try his luck making it to the end of the ridge. Unfortunately at that point, when he turned around, the headwind was so strong that he couldn’t come back along the ridge! He had a hairy landing after that, but made it to the ground safe and sound.

We drove back to the house and I made dinner last night, with the invaluable help of Sherida. Went to bed early, and now I’m updating my blog this morning instead of last night. 🙂

Today we head back to Marshall for a few flights. I may or may not fly. Yesterday was my most epic day ever, and whatever I got today wouldn’t be nearly as fun or interesting. Having said that, it would be smart to kite my newly repaired wing a bit before flying it again. 🙂

See some of you soon! My May isn’t nearly as booked up, so maybe we can hang out sometime!

I don’t want to post the link to FB and flights. The only flight today isn’t worth looking at, and the photos you can link to from yesterday’s post.

Today was an odd and difficult day. We started at Lake Elsinore. Lovely view, lovely drive along a highway with a lake view. LOTS of hang gliders when we got there. “You guys gonna launch?” “When you going to launch?” every time we passed by. Apparently they wanted info on the wind. Someone else launched before us.

After that happened, everyone scrambled to get into the air. Minutes later there was a swarm of little flying objects on the local “house thermal”. I decided, after my experience with Blossom Valley and the 7 of us flying together the other day, that I wanted to stay on the ground until that thermal cleared up a bit. I went for a hike.

While on my hike I found a trail that went out onto a ridge that had a great view of passing wings. So I took some photos of Bob and Sherida as they passed by. At one point I put the camera down to look at the view and noticed that Sherida was doing Big Ears…wait…no…her tips inflated again and then a tip collapsed again. Oh no! Rough air, she had decided to come down. I pulled out my radio and suggested that she might want to go a little harder on the brakes to keep the wing inflated. Talking afterwards, she says she was thinking about that about 10 seconds before I said anything. :). The swarm of wings had cleared, so I started to walk back to see about some flying.

I walked back to launch. Jeff and Joe were getting ready and asked if I wanted to go and retrieve Sherida from the LZ since I wasn’t flying. Sure, no problem. Joe tries a few times to launch, but the wind wasn’t cooperating with him and he took a break. Jeff stepped up and launched no problem…bleh. The wind died a bit as Joe stepped up to try again. He waited for a good cycle. Mere minutes later the wind turned around and started flowing hard down over launch. The slow 4-5 people left on launch sighed a sigh of frustration “Damnit, I should have been faster!” and people started packing up. The place was deserted shortly after.

We drove to Marshall. We had a plan to do some XC at Marshall, but it was to late today to do that. The wind wasn’t in the greatest position, but it was still no problem launching. A few thermals here and there, but nothing great for me. I started to head towards the next ridge, as I had on Wednesday. Only to find that I had no speed at all. And I was sinking quicker than I was really happy with. I pulled the speed bar and that improved my glide…maybe (it’s hard to tell on my vario – the number jumps around a lot), but I started sinking a lot faster as well. I wasn’t going to make it past the nearest ridge, so I set up to land. Easy landing on the road, no problem.

I hiked up to the top of the ridge to note that I was a lot further away from the LZ than I thought, so I started hiking. Nice thing about my harness – easy to hike with, fits nicely on my back. 20 minutes later I’m just 20m ish underneath the 750m launch. I climb up and set up for a nice launch from this beginner area. I pull my wing up and notice that there’s a twig tying 4 lines together. Can’t have that, so I pull it down and fix it. That was the last launchable cycle from the mountain.

So I start setting up for a no-wind forward, I can do that. But apparently I hadn’t noticed that it had gone slightly catabatic (the cat runs down the mountain at night…ie, the wind is now going the wrong way) making the forward much harder. I untangle my lines…then fix my leading edge…then untangle my lines…then fix my leading edge…I’m getting frustrated since I’m doing this 5-6 times in a row. Finally I get it sorted. Start the launch. But the wing didn’t get fully inflated and I didn’t pull it down fast enough so I got dragged down the slope a bit. Apparently it was quite spectacular from the LZ, but from where I was, I just slid down a gravel slope for a few feet. Frustrated, tired, annoyed at myself, I radio asking if the car can come grab me. It arrives and Guy and I have a great conversation on the way home about patience, and a lot of other things.

This morning we spent an hour planning out a potential crosscountry trip for this afternoon. If we (I) do the whole thing, we’ll have traveled 41.6 kilometers. Yikes!

Two mottos for the day – “never leave lift” and “always know where your potential landings are”. Thankfully, California is littered with landing spots. Hell, you can even land on the side of some of these ridges.

Also – found my hat this morning. Had been missing for 2 days. It’s stupid to get attached to little things like this, but this hat has been through a few hot and exercisey days with me.

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Today wasn’t a great day for me. Had 3 sort of minor flights. Had a lot of failed launches. Scraped my knee up, it’ll probably swell for tomorrow. Tore a 6 inch hole in my wing. Broke my flight deck again. Bleh.

We went to a site called Palomar. You drive through those orange groves that I posted about earlier. The smell is crazy!

The landing zone we first looked at was pretty decent sized, but it had a lot of mud in the middle of it. Also, later that day we saw a dust devil float through it. Those in paragliding circles may remember Dion’s reaction to a dust devil. We choose a different LZ after that, but it was smaller with less room for error and more little twigs sticking up all over the place.

The drive up to launch took about 5 minutes – pretty nice. I’m told that launch was MUCH nicer than last year because they mowed it. But it was tight and while it might have been pointed in the most common wind direction, it wasn’t pointed in my wind direction. I had my wing partially in the bushes to line it up properly, and then the bush/twigs pulls on your lines and holds it all down. The wind was a little light as well, so launching was an issue.

All three flights totally less than 40 minutes. A bit of fun lift here and there, but nothing much.

Landings were ok. One on a road that I was happy with, one where I misjudged the wind direction and went from a near perfect landing to getting lift another 10 feet in the air, which caused me to go screaming through a nearby bush, which might have been when my wing was torn. Last landing I missed the LZ by a few feet. I think it’s ok, since it’s a postage stamp.

The wing tear I’m told is “ok”. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I don’t like it. 6 inch tear on one of my wing tips on the leading edge, which is a pretty important part of the wing. Center tears aren’t great, but they just need to stay. Edge tears take a lot of stress from oncoming wind, pulling speed-bars, turning, etc. Bleh.

I really miss all the things back home. 🙁

Flight log

Photos

The immediate follow-up to the equipment post is…what would I change?

First – I need a stirrup thing. Clip it into your biners and push your legs against it, and it helps hold your legs up. Hour long flights are tiring, yo!

Magnets on my brake handles have to go. Clips. Clips. Magnets suck. They are constantly letting go.

My wing needs to go to the shop. 🙁 It’s been given a band-aid, but I need to take it somewhere or send it somewhere (Bob’s going to show me where later) to get the ripped panel replaced. The band-aid will hold until we get home. And the tear isn’t in a vital place anyway.

I’ll need to do a decent fix on my flight deck. One of the zippers is busted because of a failed jury-rig. I could get a new one…that’d be ok too.

Interestingly, I think that’s about it.

Edit: Oh, and a shorter antenna for my ham radio. Or a better position for it. I’ve got it velcroed to my flight deck, but the really long antenna sticks out in an inconvenient way.

Nothing shows you the deficiencies in your equipment quicker than going on a week+ long trip where you use it all day, every day. Here’s a few notes about some of my stuff:

Helmet: Awesome. I’ve got this Icaro helmet with a full sunglass shield. It’s comfy, it fits great and it keeps the sun out of my eyes better than both of my lost pairs of clip-on sunglasses. Best of all – it looks super awesome!

Clothing: If you think that you’ll be going up, up, up, layered clothing that can zip up/off is a good idea. I got up to 1600m ish at one point, and it started to get a little nippy. I see why folks wear the flight suits, but I don’t think I’m there yet. Still wearing the convertible pants/shorts, a tank and a shirt over the tank. I’ve started wearing a jacket over the tank just because of the extra neck protection from the sun, and the zip-factor.

Flight deck: I was going to say that the one I bought was a piece of shit, but I think I’m the piece of shit. Flight deck is clipped between your carabiners. There is a strap that goes between these as well. If the flight deck is clipped tighter than this strap, that means that your poor flight deck is taking the stress that the strap was designed for. Hence why it broke twice now. HOWEVER, having the bag there in front of me is great. Vario is perfectly placed and I no longer have water, food, camera, etc in my harness. That stuff was weighing my harness down.

Vario: I love this thing. NUMBERS! I love noting altitudes and comparing them against where I am on the mountain. I love watching the climb numbers. I love knowing the wind speed, my ground speed, and where the wind is coming from.

Something else interesting. It beeps a certain rate depending on your rate of climb. It buzzes at -0.2-0.0, beeps at 0.0-1.0 and beeps faster at 1.0-whatever. If you consider a thermal to be an area of lift in a cross-section of the atmosphere (so you have a 2D plane of lift), then the beeping creates an area in that 2D plane. Needs a drawing. But if you fly in a straight line, it will buzz, then beep, then beep faster, then go back to beep, then back to buzz. You just flew through lift. You’ve created a line in that plane. So turn around and go back and draw another line. Do that again and again until you’ve mapped out the area of that lift.  (then watch it go away :)). I think this is a really neat thought.

Radio: I’m carrying two radios right now. A little FRS that is Tom’s since I didn’t bring mine, expecting that we’d be using the HAMs. It’s worked great for a crappy little radio. Better than mine, even though it’s the same damn one :P. The HAM…so far has been an expensive, stressful, waste of time. I’m told I’ll use it later. But I’ve barely turned it on. I rushed, I researched, I Craigslisted and the thing is just a paperweight right now.

Harness: I both love and hate this thing. When I need to move it somewhere, I love it. When I need to pack up, I hate it. It’s back-breaking putting my things away. But I couldn’t bus with a regular sized pack, nor carry it on my scooter. Tom and Guy have these pod things, but I don’t see the need right now.

Wing bag: My concertina bag has proven it’s worth time and time again. It’s just plain awesome. The only downside with it was that it made closing my bag a little bit harder. But it made folding the wing up much easier!

Wing: I’m flying an obsolete model wing that everyone says is a great wing. It’s a DHV 1/2, which means something to some people, but not a whole lot to me. (even though I’m told it should mean something to me). I care more about how it works in comparison to reality, rather than what the numbers say. (which is odd, given the vario discussion above :P). This week I’ve given it a lot to deal with and it’s done well for me. Not as well as a Wildcat, or whatever Joe is riding. But I’ve had moments where I’ve done good things, and part of that is equipment.

Driving through orange groves. The smell is amazing…more like a flower than an orange though. But you just open your window and stick your head outside and whoosh!

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I haven’t had time to look at who is reading my blog, but I wanted to thank Melissa for commenting a few times. I know there are probably a few people reading and lurking, but it’s nice to know that I’m not just writing to a blank wall. 🙂

I had to go back and count.

Flight log

3 flights today, but only 2 of them logged. If yesterday was the shittiest day of paragliding evar, today was the best. We were at Marshall again today, same as our first day.

Flight one was pretty simple. A decent launch, 27 minute flight. The neat part of it was that I once again tried and succeeded at top-landing! Marshall has 4 launches, technically. It has the main launch, a massive thing. Then it has 3 lower launches – one at 750m, one at 350m and another at like…10m for little flights. 🙂 I flew past the 750 thinking that maybe, since I didn’t know when the truck was going to be down, that I’d land at the landing zone and then hike up to the 750. So as I passed by, I checked out the hiking options. Not great – big tall ridge in front of it. However, if I landed at the 350 I could bypass most of the tall ridge and make it back up. And there was a great thermal in front of the 750 that I could use to gain some height. So I land (with no small amount of effort!) and start getting my stuff together. While I’m doing that, Jeff flies by yelling “Are you launching again?” “Yeah!” “Bob’s coming down with the truck!” Well then! I set up again and do my second flight – a tiny little 3 minute thing heading down to the primary landing.

We head back up. I have a few clean aborts on launch due to some squirrelly wind that keeps dying on me as soon as I pull up, and due to people nearby me. They take off and I take off as well. I find a little lift, but it’s not great. At about 900m I decide to travel across one of the short ridges to see if there’s any lift on the other side. I’m still within distance of the LZ, no problem. I’m traveling over a low, flat plateau when I get a bunch of lift. Afterwards I called it “Baby’s First Thermal” because this thing was so massive that an idiot (ie, me) couldn’t help me bumble into it and get lift. I knew I was doing something right when I was Guy and Tom’s wings, below, heading towards me. I topped out at 450m above launch – this is absolutely amazing. Finally the lift died for me and I decided to head back to the primary launch to see if I could top-land there. A few minutes later I do a near-perfect top-landing (my wing landed between a car and the fence – not the best position, but it was ok). I get ahold of Guy on the radio and we agree that I’ll drive the truck down so he can finish his XC triangle.

So not only did I have the fucking most rad flight ever, but I also managed to save the day with the truck and do Guy a favour as well. You couldn’t have wiped the satisfaction off of my face with a blowtorch.

Got some great photos and soon a great dinner!

Photos