Round and Round We Go

After my Ascutney flight, I was mostly going to Morningside and Tanner-Hiller for aerotows, and I got one West Rutland sledder in between. Nothing to write home about. The only progress I made was - I stopped breaking weak links. All my flights, however, were just extended sledders at best. Until one weekend at Tanner-Hiller at the end of June....

I got off my first tow, boated around for a bit, got a few beeps from the vario here and there, and landed. While talking to Rhett after the flight, he mentioned that it was a good idea to start turning right away when he waved me off, and not to fiddle with harness and the tow bridle . I was all like "that sounds obvious, why didn't I think of it myself? Duh!". So I tried that on the next flight, and I went up right away! I gained 1000 feet in the first thermal where Rhett left me. That was awesome!

Go round and round

Then I found another thermal and got pretty close to the cloudbase.

Close to the clouds. Overlooking Quabbin reservoir.

I wasn't used to all that spinning though, and while it was fun - going up, fishing for another thermal, going up again - I started feeling a bit airsick. To recover, I went on a long glide to another side of the airfield.

On a glide

By the time I got there, I felt better, and decided to fish for another thermal. And I found one over the sandpit (you can see it in the photo above, to the right of the airstrip).

I played with it for another 15 minutes or so, and decided it was time to land.

I spent the rest of the day taking photos/videos and talking to other pilots. I got the taste of thermaling and got a good practice looking for thermals and staying in them. Great day!

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Flights: 2; Duration: 1:48