Fun day at Marshall thanks to Mark Z.

Mark Z. PMed me and offered to be my driver if I wanted to meet him and drive out to San Berdoo together (he lives about 25 minutes South of me). Mark has been flying since the gliders were 18x18... he has some very interesting stories about the old times. Anyway, he wanted to see a Sport 2 as that is what he wants to get on his return to flying, but none were out.

Because of him, I got two flights in on a very good day. Thanks, bud!

The first flight was about 35 minutes. There were thermals everywhere, but the air was trashy, so it seemed like I was either in 500 fps up or down, not much in between. Here's the map of it:



When I fly out a bit before landing, that's when I got fairly close to McKenzie and Dave Aldrich on their tandem. They were boating around pretty efficiently.

I've gotta work on my thermalling techniques.

Knowing I had a ride up, I didn't sweat landing, so I got in another sled ride.

The most interesting part of this flight was that I was at the same height and about 300 yards away from another H2 in a falcon when we were both 600 feet above the LZ. He launched about 2 minutes before me. I managed to fly efficiently enough to get him about 100-150 below me (that's when I'm fying that long horizontal line above the LZ, he did an out to in approach). So, I was making a turn into my downwind leg as he was, I thought, turning onto final.

Then he did a 360 right above the house above the LZ. That changed everything, I was flying right at him at altitude (since I was flying fast on my typical approach). I boated up a bit and he came out of his 360... we passed left wing to left wing, with me about 75' to his left and 50' up. As soon as we passed, I turned toward base and started working on getting back on my glide path.

We landed about 5 seconds and 100' apart... the flight of the Falcons. I was very excited about the show we had put on for the large weekend crowd.

The best part: he never saw me!!!!

I laughed and told him he may want to work on his situational awareness on approach. Andy Jackson is a busy joint. Then I gave him a beer. Shame of it all is that he's moving to Missouri in a few months, so I am losing a fellow n00bie, but we are flying together on Wednesday. He's not as familiar with the site, having learned at Lookout.

Saturday was the semi-annual Crestline Soaring Society meeting. John, the regional director from Santa Barbara showed and presented Rob and Dianne with placques from the Foundation for Free Flight for, in essence, being the lynchpins that hold the place together. Owen Morse, a professional juggler (www.passingzone.com) and another pilot named Len got recognized for buying the ranch house above the LZ so that it would stay in friendly hands, allowing the club to expand its grass and training hills. As it cost over $500K, this is a hell of a leap of faith, that the club would adequately support the purchase! John also got to see the new, improved training hill in action, thanks to the tractor that the Foundation helped us buy. CSS is also on the hunt for a storage unit, the insulated type like at Wallaby, and needs to do some PR with San Bernardino to help fend off further development encroachments.

I brought a camp grill/stove and some brats and burgers and gave the "Scurvy Special" to anyone I recognized and/or had chatted with. No fruits or vegetables, just brats, burgers, Doritos and beer. I was happy to see the last of the food was eaten, so I didn't waste any.

The day, in terms of hang gliding, was perfect. The only fly in the ointment was getting back at 9:30 and finding that my web server had been down since I had left it Friday afternoon. Doh!!!! Turns out when I unplugged the data center monitor, the video card was a little loose and the server froze. Since I had just been on it, it didn't occur to me to test it from an independent machine. So, I took a 45 mile trip to downtown LA, tried to find parking near 1 Wilshire (*!$@! film crews had the place blocked off and packed ), and got my server all updated, tweaked and tested at midnight. My 350z had me back home 40 minutes and a few obscene gesture later.



Note the plates.

So what if my email (and that of a half dozen friends and clients) was down yesterday. I frikkin flew.