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. 🙁