Monday, July 31, 2006

Flying at last.

Today was sunday and it was time to go flying. As we rolled into the Sylmar landing zone there were pilots awaiting to make the 45 min drive up the bumpy 4 wheel drive track to what looked like cloudbase. The weather was not great with the cloud barely above the top of the mountain and the wind a little from the east but that was not going to stop us from flying. We found a driver and vehicle to take us up and we loaded up and made the journey to the top. I pulled my brand new litespeed s 4 out of its bag and checked it out for dents after it's long journey over from the moyes factory. Considering this glider had been built at the last minute and not test flown I took my time and carefully set it up. Chris and I took off and quickly climbed up and raced down the ridge to the east. The wind was a little east and base was to low to go that far down the ridge so we turned around and headed west down the range toward's the west towers some 7-8kms down the ridge. We had fun ridge racing together along with an atos who seemed to just be keeping up with us. We did a few ridge runs back and forth and then went and landed after about 1 hour of flying. I think I broke nearly every flight park rule on my winding down and landing approach but it seemed that they still enjoyed my company for the day. The club here is very well organised with a great infrustructure with a landing field shelters,drink machine and 2 shipping containers that hold 70 gliders in lock up. There is a hang gliding shop across the road and quite a few tandem instructors promoting the sport by doing tandems here everyday. This is one of the storage containers they use to store their gliders. Dave adams one of the top pilots for many years in Australia who moved to LA that I had not seen for probably 7-8 years turned up at the LZ to say hello as he herd I was in town. After a quick chat Chris and I loaded up as we had a few other things to do before it got to late. We then went to a great Italian resturant and returned home to do some computer work. It is now 1 am and were still kicking. This is a picture from the LZ with take off in the background.