Monday At The Office

Isaac & Nico

Today one of my youngest parishioners, Nico, who is just learning to talk, asked his dad if he could see me, (Pastor Dave). His request came at the same moment I was stressing BIG TIME over how to get a second 4wheel drive for retrieve at Baldy.

"Chance" had it that his dad was at the gas station an hour later as I was gassing up for the day. He told me Nico's unique request and I was off to their house to see Nico before going flying.

As we started talking it turned out that Nico and his brother Isaac(4) were just about to head off on an adventure with their dad and grandfather. I suggested they take a detour in their nice red 4wheel drive Tundra and take me and a couple of friends to the top of the hill. The boys wouldn't mind watching Pastor Dave fly would they?

The game was on as Pastor Dave's prayers were answered through a 2 year old and his father.

Go Figure.
Here is the video:

Dateline Manastash Ridge

In a cunning move North West Star Paraglider Pilot Meredyth Malocsay took the lead in this season's Pacific Northwest XC competition. Taking a page from comp flying she feigned a tactical mistake to hide a brilliant strategic move. Comp pilots will often wait for very long times in thermals for a bold or foolish pilot to lead out. Like in bike racing where the leader is used as a wind break, paraglider pilots use a solo leader to judge the rising or sinking air further down the course. Malocsay's found herself eye to eye in a thermal with her competition, the up and coming pilot known as Preacher when she made her move.
Preacher's lead after the first weekend of competition placed Malocsay in a bind. If she were to fly as a team they might have worked similar lines which would have led to similar scores. "Preacher is flying really well," said Malocsay when asked about the competition. "We usually try to work together early in a flight but I knew there was a chance he would head out early if I held back. It worked out to my advantage, as it turned out."
Malocsay's move occurred over launch as the two were thermalling together working to reach the towers in the house thermal. In a right hand turn, established by Preacher they were at 180's in 500fpm lift when after 2 or 3 circuits Malocsay inexplicably turned left leaving Preacher and the thermal. "I still don't know why she bailed," Preacher complained. "It didn't make any sense we were cranking just fine and then she was gone." The move left the new comer at the top of lift having to choose between waiting for others to join him, risking that a building layer of cirrus might shut down lift or heading east in search of the next thermal alone.
Malocsay's strategic plan paid off when Preacher dirted on the newly opened right spine of the Boylston Ridge. Malocsay reported: "I saw Dave on the ground and knew I wasn't going that way and stayed with the traditional line. He paid the price for searching out a new line without having enough height. But tomorrow is another day." There is always something to learn in paragliding and sometimes that learning is done from the ground.

When asked about Malocasy performance Preacher said: "I don't know I guess she just thinks and flies at another level." Logging over 35miles to Preacher's 10miles Malocsay takes top honors for the day and the yellow jersey for the competition.

The second day of Round 2 begins Saturday at the Rock @ 11:00.

Guess Who Dropped in For Dinner

Friday and Saturday - My Oh My.
A quick look at leonardo will tell the story about Friday. Thanks for the retrieve M.

Saturday was great for many. Baldy was a challenge early on with a Easterly Flow that made launching difficult and thermals at ridge top and below very tricky to find and work. Those who got up really went up. Those who didn't went down and experience a nice day on the mountain but must have lusted after those way high.

Cloud base was around 9 to 10,000 ft. I launched last for a variety of reasons and had no particular plans other than maybe a little triangle or something.

On my second top up I found a street in front of me heading toward the firing center and South and it looked like it might go round the corner East through what Steve P. calls the "needle."
The needle is a corridor of airspace between Yakima Firing range restrictions and Yakima Air Terminal restrictions. - Parts of it also includes flying over land you can't land on but can fly over. Tricky stuff requiring advanced prep which I did a bit of and was ready when the streets appeared over the route.
I figured I would go as far as lift allowed and found streets granting 5,500 to 9,000 for over two hours right down the line.
At the 3/4 mark about 6:00 the street was looking real big and suck started to be an issue. I headed due South into the next valley to get away but was able to maintain contact with the street for lift as I continued S.E.
About 6:50 the sun had given up on heating the ground and the cloud street above and in front of me literal evaporated before my eyes.
The Air turned to Glass and I was at 8,500 on final glide. - More distance or ?? what to do. Sunnyside was to my right and I have a good friend who lives there that happens to have a large green back yard - About 1.5 acres. SWEET.
Got there with a thousand to spare - Set up and landed.
Where did you come from was the question and I said North of Yakima. - Smiles all around cold beer, Salmon on the barbecue ready on landing with cous cous and fruit. - What a way to end a great two days of flying.

Friday

:)

Perfect Retrieve at Dunlap

I had a great second task at the Nationals. The effort required just to get out of the valley was right at my max ability and everything was working.

Once southbound however I was out of my element. Just freeflying South without any experiance as to what would work or what wouldn't.

I took a line that put me too far east for sustained lift and I landed in the middle of nowhere which was fine because they had set up radio high ground and I had good communications with Sonny the retrieve maven.

After waiting on 152 in a nowhere valley for about 45 minutes a single car came by and offered a ride. - Following procedures I check w/ retrieve, informed them of my new destination - corner of 152 and 245 and my eta. We headed out and I was dropped in nowhere again. Now however there was no radio or cell coverage but I sent another SPOT OK and set up shop for the long wait.

The following Video shows what happens when you do what your supose to do and so does the system.

Timing is everything!!!

quicky report

just a quicky - all is well - landed at the ranger station but kept it safe - big day.
posted most of my flights on leo except last two days.
Having a great time and learning alot.
Fly home on Sat
One more day to try and make goal. - We will see

What a wonderful day Tuesday. – Sun, Sun, Sun.

A fine crew came from the wet side and were treated with Sound of Music fields on top of Selah Butte. A couple of short retrieves and a couple of hours of flying in active air added to log book and practice hours.

No one went very high, maybe 5.5k or so, I think the high pressure kept us down, a counter perspective blamed winds. Whatever the cause we didn’t go high but had lots of fun. I finaly got to fly Selah Butte and met the owner of the treatment center at the south side of the canyon. He asked that we not land in their nice green grass or the large field just North of their facility. Be advised.

Now I fly to Dunlap where my wing and I meet for the first time tomorrow evening. We have much planned.

I am not even taking my OZONE. Let us hope the new relationship goes well.

New Wing - New SPOT

"Uadjet"

The wing is in the Air - Hope to get it by Dunlap. Rob thinks I will get it in time so we will see. I wonder when they put the rest of the lines on it this pic seems a bit light on lines.

I have a new web site for linking all our SPOT pages. The link is new on the right of this page. Make a note of it and submit your "SPOT share" page to me and I will add you to the list. The more the merrier. Useful on retrieve as you never know who you will have to find.

Preacher

Scratch and Save

Saturday was very busy - A number of issues for work took the morning then flying in the afternoon and football ref for a semi pro game in the evening. Busy Busy Busy.
Flying was great - Mer cranked a masive flight for the conditions - high presure kept us under 5K most the day.
I took two flights on baldy and the second was the rocker. - Launch and scratch nothing working well the ridge was sparse and eventualy I went out after being tired of risking my life for 10 feet. -
All the way down the ridge to the South LZ - just 500 ft over road just enough for a clean landing and I got 0's and 10 feet up on a pass and 3 feet down and back up and back and forth and 40 minutes of hard hard work and I was on top again.
The reward was a lift to just under 5K but the deep pleasure was cracking the mountain.!!! - GREAT STUFF!!!!!!

SPOT on Nuvi

Thursday was SPOT On!
Flying with the big boys and girl was great fun for Mike and myself. 11:00 at the rock confirmed by text and cell. - It was a day for technology to shine. Dave W., Mer, and Myself all had our SPOTs on.

Nice lift and great looking skies provided a wonderful day of flying at Baldy. Everyone went XC except Chris A who was testing out his new pod and arriving late took a toplanding option. Mike took his first ride to exit 11 - nice work. I had a Big up and Big down dusting on the top of Manastash ridge while Mer, Dave, Stefan and Steve P went toward Windmills and points north.

This blog is more about retrieve technology than flying. 7 minutes after landing on top of the ridge I got a phone call from Bob Bunger who had noted my landing on my SPOT page. He was checking to make sure I was ok and was able to answered a critical question for me: "Is it a shorter walk down the ridge or hike along the ridge to the north?" I didn't know but he did because he had me on my SPOT map. The answer was to go down the ridge directly to I82.

My phone was low on power so when I got to I-82 I turned it back on to find Mike 10 minutes away and a text message from Mer's SPOT with her Lat/Lon - I punched it into the her Nuvi on the dash and we followed the line right to her. Stefan was on the same road and we picked Mer up just as she got to the road after a 20 min drive right to her!!!

A couple of phone calls and once Dave forwarded his SPOT Lat/Lon to Mer we were off with a new target on the Nuvi and got to him 14 min later just as he finished packing his wing. - Next catch was Steve P who got a ride to E-burg and his Lat/Lon was a Texaco station and the finish line on the Nuvi brought us right to him. -
For No Brainer Retrieves:
Get a SPOT, a texting phone and a Nuvi!!!!!

LEO seems down - will post flight when it is up.

Check out this little video of Mike McIntyre from the day before.

Baldy Season Begins

Mike Over The Tower

So much for a winter of cold ridges an solo launches in freezing winds. The sun is out and the laps rate is climbing. Thermal season has begun. Last Saturday a crew came out and flew their hearts out. Lift was not great but the North flow kept many in the air as long as they liked. 4 pilots went XC - no great distances but fun nonetheless. Clouds streets were in play but they wanted to play over the firing range.

Wednesday became the day of wondering - On again, off again, calls for wind - to much wind- just the right amount of wind. The final morning call was it should work and work it did. Steady flow on the hill of 7 to 14 north on launch from 12:00 till almost 4:00. Mike McIntyre and I took turns flying, only one 4wheeldrive between us. I went first and had a very uncomfortable time on the east ridge catching ratty air to about 1k over then sinking out back and forth for about 40 min before I lost it and sank out. I left the hill just a bit to early.

Mike hit I just right 40 min later. On launch and big air catching cloud suck and playing till his heart was content.

The final flight with winds increasing and clouds growing the toss up went to me.

The launch was fine and lift instantaneous. I was up and over the back in 2 minutes or less and the primary thermal was laying over at an angle I couldn't believe. But, the vario was screeming so down wind I went and up toward base.

The same problem that faced us on Saturday came to bite again. Wonderful street going right over the firing range. I opted to hang a right and hope for something on the much less hopeful mini street forming to the west. It was not productive and the sink in route was massive. I should have stayed with the primary street all the way to 82 rather than heading sw. I would have had much more altitude and might have been able to make the corner near Rest Haven. Ended up landing south of the canyon about a mile or two. Nice air and a very fast ride total air time for the screemer was 28 minutes average speed 21 mph max ground speed over 40. Today and tomorrow will be good North and then West. Come fly with us at Baldy

Baldy Spring & The Pink Panther

Bob Bunger and I got a treat Friday afternoon. A Badger Pocket customer of his drove my rig down for us so we got a free flight at Baldy. - Winds were great, NNW 12-16 on launch. Thermal pockets when the cu's let the basin heat up. Top for the day 4.7K. Lots of fun and a good hour or two were left in the air unflown. I got an hour and a half - Bob's fingers were colder so he dropped out a bit sooner.
Enjoy two videos. The first one is just a fun search for Bob in flight and the second is my attempt to break my JVC camcorder on launch.

April Fool

I spent a couple hours late Wednesday looking for wind that would work. This is what I found. And an extra video also just below.

I promised video from Kiona Spring Lift - here it is:

Flying in Google Earth

You can fly your flights and those of your friends with a great perspective view in Google Earth. - You may have already figured it out but I just did so I figure some others could use a leg-up.

Great lead from Mike Bomstad: IGC FLIGHT REPLAY @ http://ywtw.de/igcsimen.html -real cool and easy to run!

Try it you will like it.

Thursday - Spring Lift

After a meeting in Sunnyside I was half way to Kiona and the winds were predicted to move from overpowering to light through the day. Where would they be on arrival?
2:30 was just about right - nice easy launch and then spring thermal joy in 500fpm smoothys to almost 4K.
Rick and Curt came and flew a bit. I got 4 or 5 flights and some video that will show up later this weekend.
Where is My New Wing!!!!! - Come on Bruce fly it and send it!
Dave (limits?)

Warm Up

Double Click Image Above.

Monday was a good warm up for summer XC planning through execution. Initial look at XCSkies indicated that good lift (3500ft agl-tul - the red line above) along with a tailwind, would present itself over the SW to NE XC route from Eagle. Eagle wind speeds would likely exceed launch parameters mid day when lift was maximum for the XC route so I planned to launch early work ridge and wait for thermals.

Not a bad plan and it was great to watch the day work toward goal but a long XC will have to wait for later in the season.

As the top of usable lift increased over the morning - each successive ride to the top was higher by 4-500 feet but the winds also increased making it harder and harder to penetrate back into lift or to the ridge when I lost the thermals. After about 2 hours of work I dropped out the back in a laps in attention and it was all over. I couldn't make it back to the ridge and had to top land on the plateau. The nice thing about Eagle is that the plateau is big, flat and rotor free.
It was a good warm up to work through weather, route, strategy, tactics and execution.

Lessons learned - Focus Focus Focus.

Last of Winter - First of Spring

The Last Day of Winter and the First Day of Spring both gave up marvelous flights.


Yesterday Rick (Doc) Shallman, Curt Boschek and I spent the better part of 4 hours soaring, skimming, kiting, thermaling and even a little hiking at Eagle Butte in S.W. Richland. The wind was just right and valley heat gave us lots of texture to play with. Great way to finish the winter flying season. Unfortunately I left my GPS on the kitchen table so no LEO tracks for my 5 flights, 20min, 30min, 1:12, 56min, 15 min.

Friday afternoons Bob Bunger can fly so we met at the Bump LZ at noon for a sledder or two. On top we were thrilled to find cycles and very launchable conditions. Bob left first as I screwed around with my wing including letting it fall on my head - good thing no one was watching: lol. I looked up and Bob was 400 over launch and laughing. The bump sometimes gives up ridge flights but thermals rides are rare because we don't really like low level thermals and Baldy is so much safer, but today it was Bob's.

Just as I launched Bob said he thought it was dropping off and was heading for the LZ - Truth was it was likely the back flow of a major cycle and I launched right into it. I was 600 over launch before Bob was half way to the LZ.
Back and forth and up and down a real rodeo ride. At one point I was about 300 ft over the top of an invisible dusty that kicked me with the news that YOUR GOING THIS WAY! a quick 360 up and back kept my wing over my head but it was quite a ride.

After about an hour I was finally able to get my radio out of my pocket to talk with Bob who had returned to launch. He said it looked to be more fun than he was interested in and informed me that the afternoon forecast called for SW @ 15-20. - That was enough for me and out I went for nice but active LZ landing. 30 minutes after landing the winds really kicked off and were better than 20 gust to 25.

Lessons learned: Don't launch with your keys and radio in the same pocket.
Always have the weather forecast figured even if your just going for a sledder.
Spring has Sprung.
Preacher

Great little Valle De Bravo Video

Enjoyed this one:
Paragliding worlds 2009 Mexico from broers philippe on Vimeo.

Wind and Wing

Winds are on in a big way over here. 35mph - The house is shaking so I guess we won't be flying today! Hopefully the Big Snake will arrive this week and by Friday the winds will die in her honor. - Look for my new colors: Cobra XL, Orange White and Red - Airwaves Fire Pattern.

Pick Your Pleasure

Saturday was a classic nice spring day between fronts. Saddle projections looked almost perfect for a XC thermic day but my begging, cajoling and pleading reaped no takers. Next pick on the list of sites was Tiger so 9:00a.m. found me on the road up over Manashtash looking East at developing cu and wishing someone had said yes. As it turned out weather reports from Saddle and environs proved out with light N winds till 12:00 then switch to South. Temps in the mid 40's with cu and blue sky. Was it the better call - we will never know. So goes flying in the spring.
The 12:30 Tiger shuttle was full and it was great to see Mike although his tree avoidance radar seemed in need of adjustment. On launch Stefan and Steve launched after the first wind dummy rocked and rolled trying to figure out surge control. It was working on the South launch. The skyrockets lifted and caught a bubble and were soon out of sight. If they can work it I was sure I could kick it as well. - Well not so fast - lift was out there but I missed a couple of turns or the timing was just off, in any event I found my way to the wall and unable to bench up and had to succumb to gravity and ground.
On landing I had a nice chat with the folk and awaited the van for the 2:30. Looking up I saw Randy L. cranking up and I wished I had waited till he had launched. He reported topping out well over 5K. The van couldn't leave soon enough for me I helped load and forgot to grab my coat and flight suit from the picnic table. This time we missed the tree and we were safe on the South launch by 3:45. I almost ran to launch in hopes of getting the last of the big lift. A look in my kit confirmed my dread and no jacket or suit was found. - The pilot standing next to me unpacked his jacket and flight suit, (one of Mark's crew) said I could use his jacket. -THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to the forgotten named saint who saved my day. The Jacket was left at Mark's) - A quick launch was the right call, a little back and forth heavy weight shift figure eights and I was over launch in the sweetest little light lift constant no edge thermal I think I have ever ridden. Beep Beep beep and the first off stayed at the top of the stack with only a momentary race with one other Blue bird wing. I topped at 4,762. Word has it that Steve Wilson with good karma aboard worked up later to even higher with at least one other high bird in tow. Well done for all who enjoyed the day.
I followed the ridge up and on to top the towers and started looking XC - I was happy when Randy radioed back his willingness to take retrieve. - Owe you Randy and thanks Conrad. A nice little glide with cold hands and I was hovering over the new soccer fields in Preston. Step one in my Tiger Tag XC portfolio. - The beauty of Tiger and the foothills in the sun and snow is hard to describe and being high is an awesome privilege and joy. First time up high and out at Tiger was a great pleasure.