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.