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!
One of the major sites that open up when you get H3 rating is Mount Ascutney, Vermont. It is one of the popular cross-country flying sites. Thus on a good flying day people are reluctant to deal with newbies. Site director, Jake, invented a rule to have a first flight off Ascutney to be early in the day. That means a sledder. And it needed to be observed by H4 that flown there before.
Saturday, June 7th, was looking really good as one of those cross-country flying days. People on MA hang gliding list where discussing forecast and who was going to fly... I sheepishly raised my virtual hand and asked if anyone would be willing to help this newbie. Tom Lanning excused himself saying he was still waiting for parts for his T2C glider. But Ilya Rivkin offered his help to show me LZs. Great!
Ilya and I were going to meet at Morningside and leave for Ascutney around 9:30am. While we were deciding on logistics, Tom showed up as well. Apparently he couldn't stay away when such great day was forecasted. His T2C was still not ready, but he had a Falcon. It's nice to have a spare glider.
Tom was happy to join us and help Ilya introducing me to the site. We loaded gliders on my truck and drove to LZs on the other side of Ascutney. Unfortunately, the shortest road to the LZ was closed and we had to detour on a few gravel roads. That added another 20 minutes of travel time.
To me it was all part of fun as Tom knows a lot about this site, flying in general, and always has a story or two to tell. The extra driving time wasn't boring.
Photo courtesy of Ilya Rivkin
After we checked all LZs and discussed possible flying patterns and approaches, we had to detour all the way back to the road that goes up the mountain through the state park. By the time we got there, it was almost noon and many pilots were already at the gate, minimizing number of vehicles they had to take up. Jake was there as well. He decided that it was too late for me to fly there. Later on, I learned another pilot had his first Ascutney flight the same day, and he actually soared. Oh well, not quite sure the point of that rule was anyway, but I didn't feel like arguing. I could always go and enjoy towing at Morningside.
Since the gliders were already on my truck, and I was going back anyway (no extra vehicle to retrieve later on), I drove Tom and Ilya all the way to the parking lot at the top of the mountain. Then I went back to Morningside for aerotowing.
I had a few flights at Morningside, and I discovered than my towing skills degraded. Now I was snapping weak links on almost every flight. Granted that was in midday, pretty turbulent, thermal conditions, but it never happened to me before, not at that rate anyway, and no one else was breaking weak links that day either. I snapped 2 links and then had 2 good flights.
In the evening, Tom and Amy treated me to dinner for all my troubles. There is always some silver lining!
What else? Oh yes, Ilya, in his brand new Sport2, had first cross-country flight that day. Congratulations, Ilya!
A week later, I snapped a weak link again, this time while towing with Rhett. He immediately told what I was doing wrong. I haven't snapped a weak-link since. What it was, when a plane would be bumped up by a thermal, I was correcting my position too fast, putting too much stress on the link. All I had to do was to make the transition slower and that fixed the problem. That was easy. Thanks Rhett!
Hike, Hike, Hike and Get Your Sledder
A couple of weeks after my first attempt, the conditions at Ascutney were looking pretty good for another try.
Saturday, Kevin Webb and I asked John Musto to help us out with our required sledder. He could do it only in the evening that day, and we hoped that condition would still be good around 5-6pm. Good for a sledder anyway. Another pilot joined our group as well. A visiting hang gliding instructor, working temporarily at Morningside (I forgot his name...).
John was super helpful and he even drove us there! We walked the main LZ again. And then drove to the launch site.
Hike from the parking lot at the top of the mountain to the launch site is ~0.5 miles. Walking with a 17' long bag on your shoulder is not an easy thing. Hiking on a mountain trail with this thing, is much worse. At least Falcon is somewhat light ~45-50 pounds.... plus a harness and a helmet, water and whatever equipment you take with you. It's a workout!
We made it there in about 20 minutes or so.
We set up our gliders and ...... the wind was crossing from the north and it was pretty gusty, too. After waiting for another hour, we decided to try tomorrow morning. Park was closing soon.
Windy evening at Ascutney (photo courtesy of Kevin Webb)
We put gliders behind the trees and left them there for the night. The other pilot that was with us had to work tomorrow morning, so he broke down his glider and we helped him to carry it back. Tomorrow was going to be another hike. At least this time only with my harness.
...
The next morning, we got to Ascutney as early as we could. Right after park opened. Hiking that trail without a glider on my shoulder was so much, much easier. I was hooked-in and ready to roll by 9:30AM. At launch, there was a slight breeze coming straight in at about 5mph. A few other pilots took a morning hike to enjoy the views. They helped on launch, and even took a video of me running down the rock. Camera on the wing of my glider got knocked out of whack while we were carrying the glider, so all I got was a "nice" video of my wing with not much else in the view.
Launch itself was pretty easy in such mild conditions. I set myself a goal to run all the way to the end of the rock (it's pretty steep), and I think I got that part down. The flight was short and uneventful, but I got a flavor of this site, and I hope to try again in soarable conditions. It should be fun. Big thanks to John Musto for helping us out with this task.
A week after I got my H3 rating, I got a text from Vitaly Pogrebnoy asking if I wanted to fly Mohawk Trail. The launch site is in North Adams, MA, right above Route 2 not far from hairpin. Vitaly has flown there a few times and he thought the forecast was good for Sunday.
Wind direction indeed looked good, but wind speed was on a lighter side. It didn't matter to me as I would gladly take a sledder just to fly at a new site.
Vitaly came to my house around 7am, we loaded my glider on his car and off we went. It's about 2 hours drive from my house, but we also wanted to check LZs. Another pilot, Rosan, would join us at the launch site.
All was going according to plan for 2-3PM launch. We checked different landing options, left one car in the bailout LZ right across the launch, and started setting up our gliders. Around 11am there were nice cumulus clouds forming above launch, indicating a possibility of thermal lift. By 1-2pm the sky was mostly clear above us with nice clouds across the valley. Not much use to us. Wind also was very weak, under 10 mph. It looked like a sledder day. Oh well.
I launched around 4pm. The launch was pretty easy in a very light wind. When in the air, there was not much going up close to the ridge. I was losing altitude right away. I made a few turns trying to sniff something out above route 2 to no avail.
Flying over Route 2
The bailout LZ is just 800 feet below launch, so there is not much time to do anything unless you find some lift right away. In 3 minutes I was in landing mode. I boxed the field and made a nice DBF approach landing in south direction. LZ windsock was just hanging down most of the time with slight gusts once in a while. I was landing precisely where I wanted to land. I got bumped by some thermal activity on final but corrected it and landed well. All that training was paying off.
Vitaly launched soon after me and didn't stay in the air for too long either. He landed with a nice flare.
I really liked the site, but one needed more than 10mph winds, or/and solid thermals to reliably fly there. Maybe next time...
After my trip to Florida where I got a chance to fly WW Sport 2, my confidence level increased and I wanted to fly other sites. The problem was, most of them required H3 rating. I certainly didn't want to break any rules, so the priority for me for the season was to advance my rating. I had enough flying hours, all I needed was to pass a written test and a spot landing test. Spot landing is basically three consecutive landings within 50' of a spot after flights requiring turns on approach. Launching from 450 at Morningside was a perfect place to do the practice and the test. I still had a problem estimating how long my glide was going to be. I needed a lot of practice and some help.
So, again just like last year, I got to Morningside as soon as they opened for the season. I got 8 flights the very first day. I was getting better and better with DBF (downwind-base-final) approach and got a much better feel for where I was going to touch down. I went to Morningside every chance I got, but the weather didn't cooperate sometimes. I used one of rainy weekends to complete my written test. And other times, I squeezed in a few towing flights - at Morningside and Tanner-Hiller. My landings were still not perfect as I got almost no feel for flare, but I was consistently landing where I wanted... or at least close enough.
On a couple of other weekends, I asked David Baxter to observe me and give me some feedback. He gladly agreed. He gave me plenty of information on what I could improve and even flown my Falcon to show me how it was done. Good times. Thank you, David!
And finally, on Memorial Day weekend, I gathered enough confidence to go through with a spot landing test. I started early in the morning, practicing. Then later same day, Josh observed me landing near bullseye. I got one landing ~25' away from the target and another two closer to 50', but all in the required range. 8 flights off 450 total that day. Eric Meibos got me the paperwork for USHPA rating - I was all set to start exploring new sites.
Josh and I after I completed H3 spot landing test
The same day Dana Harris was doing spot landing for his H4. He passed as well. Congratulations, Dana!
...
And of course, socializing with other pilots is always fun. On Saturday night, Ilya Rivkin and David Park were doing bbq and feeding hungry pilots - ribs and something tasty wrapped in bacon was on the menu. Life is good. Thank you guys! Here are a few photos -> Memorial Day Weekend At Morningside.
And here is a video from Memorial Day weekend - different pilots practicing spot landings:
My first aerotow at Morningside in 2014... Actually, it was the first aerotow of the season at Morningside. Eric Meibos (a tug pilot) wanted to open aerotowing with a more experienced pilot first, so Josh Laufer (an instructor at Morningside) test flown my Falcon before me, and only then I went. When we started to roll, the cart pulled to one side and I decided that I had enough speed to get out of the cart. I started to push out slightly, came up, and weak link snapped.
I recovered quickly and landed on my belly. No harm was done. Eric told me I should have stayed on the cart longer and bump-steer it if it pulled to one side. I've done exactly that on my next try and had no problem all the way to 2500' AGL. It was around 5PM and clear sky. I couldn't find anything that would bring me up, so my flight was a sledder. Around 24 minutes total, including the tow.
It's April already and flying at the Cape is closed in a week, so when I saw marginally good forecast for Friday - I was going. I picked up Krassi Kaltchev along the way and we got to White Crest beach around 10am.
Kevin Webb and Keith Beebe were already there. Then David Park pulled in as well. We all set up the gliders, but wind was too weak. No one was willing to risk a 30 feet sledder down the dunes.
Hangwaiting group
Normally, we would have tried to launch anyway, but after all winter storms, a walkway to the bottom of the dune was completely gone. That meant, if you land right away you would have to breakdown and hike to the next parking lot about a mile away.
Paragliders were using a rope to climb back up, but that would be a bit tricky with a 17' long package on your shoulders.
Paraglider flying to the north of launch. You can see a climbing rope going down the dune.
We all waited for something in 15+ mph range, but winds as measured at the top of the dune, were maxing out at 12mph. The forecast indicated a possibility of a slight increase in wind speed, but it never materialized.
Paragliders were teasing us from the air until we all decided to pack it around 5pm. Oh well, I was really looking forward to another day of beach flying, but mother nature had other plans. Till fall then.
I estimated different options on how to get to Wallaby Ranch from Massachusetts. For two of us (Natalia and I) it was slightly cheaper to drive than fly in, rent a glider, car, etc. Plus, it would allow us to stop on the way there, explore different places and take a few photos.
We loaded my truck, and got on the road early morning
Ready to roll
On the way down, we planned a two days trip, stopping in Savannah, Georgia.
Savannah is a beautiful town and we spent a few hours there taking pictures and playing tourists. I love photography, but my main goal was to fly. I would have loved to stay another day in Savannah, but vacation days were limited. As day progressed, I was getting restless, and wanted to get on the road. We needed to get to Wallaby Ranch before dark.
Savannah's Police Station
Downtown Savannah
Downtown Savannah
Welcome to Wallaby
Wallaby
We arrived to Wallaby at dusk. We hoped to rent one of the cabins, and skip camping in a tent, but everything was taken because of WW demo days. We only could get a cabin for the first night and we took that option to avoid setting up a tent in the dark.
When morning arrived, we got coffee and breakfast (food was excellent, by the way), I filled out all necessary papers so I could fly there and ... Winds were blowing 25-30 miles on the surface. No flying.
Winds were supposed to die down around 3-4PM, and the next day a storm was predicted in the evening - high winds, rain, thunderstorms. It looked like not much flying was in the cards for me.
Good Morning Wallaby!
Xmass Tree
Our camp... Next to a Tom's ALiner camper.
Forecast held for the day and by 4:30PM a line of pilots to be towed up formed at one side of the ranch.
In line for a tow
I was really impressed how efficient operation at Wallaby was. Three tugs were constantly towing people up. Staff on the ground was assisting with carts retrieval, and getting pilots back in the tow line after they landed.
I had 3 flights with the first one being a sledder, seconds being an extended sledder, and on the third one I played with a weak thermal for 20 minutes. I couldn't have been happier. I eventually lost that thermal, and couldn't find a replacement, but still, if you followed my posts from 2013, it was a huge progress for me.
I logged about 1.5 hours that day, and got my confidence back for a demo flight the next morning. The only thing that slightly worried me was landings. Flare on Falcon was still a mystery to me, and on two of my landings I ended up on my knees. Not a big deal, but not a confidence inspiring result either.
...
The day ended with great food and live music. A good company made it all even better. A few people I knew traveled for the event as well - Tom Lanning, Peter Judge, and Matt Carr.
Dinner bell
Live music is on
Peter Judge
Amy and Tom Lanning
Matt Carr
Sport 2
The next morning, I grabbed my helmet and harness and went looking for Steve Pearson, Wills Wing designer who was in charge of the event. There were a couple of people in front of me who wanted to try Sport 2 as well. It was an early morning and overcast, so the flights were short, and I didn't have to wait too long before it was my turn. Steve adjusted a hang loop for me, gave me a few pointers on use of VG, and off I went.
As soon as the glider lifted out of the cart, my worries all disappeared. This glider was so easy to tow, it was practically flying on its own. When I released, I played with the glider at different VG settings. In calm morning air, the glider was super easy to control. It was turning by just thinking about it.
Then came time to land. I forgot to mention that Ryan Voight was running a landings clinic. He setup a camera, and told everyone who wanted to participate - simply land next to it. You'd be observed, filmed, and critiqued later on.
To land there, I felt I had to setup my approach much lower over the trees than I was comfortable with, so I knew I was going long, but better safe than sorry. Anyway, on my first landing, I left quarter of VG on, made a few S-turns to lose altitude, and went on a long final. I was surprised how easy the glider responded to my inputs, and how much easier it was for me to feel the glider in ground effect. I was still a tad late with my flare, but overall it felt much easier to land than Falcon. I was all smiles and giggles - I wanted this glider. No, I NEEDED this glider. NOW!
One of the guys from the ground crew commented that I wasn't towing right behind the plane, and I should go for another run, and fix it. I didn't really feel like my first tow was that bad but hey, I was up for another flight in that great glider. There were no other pilots wanting to test fly Sport2 so I immediately went for another flight. It felt even better the second time around. Now I needed to get $5K. ASAP :-)
Landing demo Sport 2 (photo courtesy of Ryan Voight)
I spent afternoon listening to Ryan and Paul Voight discussing different aspects of landing a glider. Ryan presented a lot of video evidence for every point he was making. It was educational. Then he reviewed videos he took earlier in the morning. He gave me a few suggestions on how to improve my landings, also how to change final approach for better spot landing. That part was important to me as I eventually was going for H3 rating that has a spot landing test.
Ryan Voight
Non-flying fun
That was it for my flying in Florida. The rest of the day was all overcast, a perfect weather for sledders, and not the one to play with thermals. I didn't feel like taking another short tow in a Falcon, so we hiked around Wallaby Ranch property instead:
Wallaby Ranch trails
The next day, as forecasted, huge storm rolled in. The wind was so strong, it took down the big tent outside that was set for the Wills Wing sponsored party. And a lightning struck ground maybe 300 yards from cafeteria where everyone was weathering the storm. A bit later, Mitch Shipley found a few pieces of sand baked by lightning
Baked sand
Before the storm, we packed our tent and checked into a hotel a few miles away. We also spent time driving around, trying exotic food, and just playing tourists. Once I wasn't in a hurry to get anywhere, I was enjoying taking photos.
Alligator's tail. Tastes like chicken.
Osprey at Boyd Hill Nature Park, St Pete, Florida
And of course - an alligator (Boyd Hill Nature Park)
St Pete at night
Back Home
On the way back, New England met us with another storm. This one was much colder with white stuff falling out of the sky
