flightstuff blog (flog?)

It’s Saturday, September 20. Haven’t flown in a few weeks due to all the rain that made it up this far from the gulf with Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. Today finally looks like a flyable weekend day, but unfortunately our truck is in the shop getting an electrical problem fixed. It might be done later today, so its possible that we’ll try to get out tomorrow.

I’ve just uploaded a video to Vimeo for the first time. Check it out at http://www.vimeo.com/1771074 . Vimeo pretty much blows Youtube out of the water as far as video quality. Vimeo allows viewing of videos in high def, as well as keeping the original uploaded video available for download (which will be an even higher resolution, better looking copy).

It’s a nice setup, and it’s got me thinking about completely reworking flightstuff.net by making all the videos available on Vimeo. My next step is getting some more videos uploaded, and then seeing about embedding them on this site.

It’s Monday, Sep. 1st, and the annual Magazine Mt. Labor Day Fly In is winding up. As often happens in the sport of hang gliding, the weather didn’t cooperate, and so our plans had to change accordingly. Mag saw some action on Wednesday, Aug. 27th, but after that, we had nothing but east winds, and so the entire fly in weekend was spent at Nebo, flying the east side.

A group of pilots did make it to Mag on Wednesday, August 27th. We had SW winds, and a couple of us got a flight. Unfortunately, one of our group had a mishap and wound up in the trees on the side of the mountain. The State Park rangers got him out, a helicopter took him to a Fort Smith hospital, and he was released later that evening. Hi glider is repairable, and he’s okay, so that’s all that really matters.

After that, we’ve seen nothing but east winds, and so all hang gliding activities shifted to Nebo. There were quite a few visiting pilots along with the large turnout of locals, and even though the flying was not as good as we had hoped, we all had a good time.

Today is actually the final day of the fly in, and some of the folks camped out in the Nebo area, as well as some of the locals who live nearby may try to get a flight. It’s going to be strong winds, because Hurricane Gustav is closing in on the Gulf Coast today, and the forecast is for blow out conditions at Nebo.

So, we’re staying home and resting up today. We’ve had some okay air, a lot of fun, and a nice break from work. Maybe next year the Mag fly in can actually take place at Mag.

I finished a video and got it uploaded to the site today. It’s called “Why I Fly”. It turned out pretty well, I think. It can be found on the video page of Flightstuff.net.

I’ve still got a good bit of unused video footage from the last few months, and some good stuff from Nebo the last couple of flights I’ve had there. I’ll try to shoot some more over the coming weekend, and then I hope to put together another vid that highlights the two fly-ins.

Sunday was a fairly high wind day, with the NE launch on the edge of blowing out early in the afternoon. By around 3 it had settled down a little bit, and several of us got in the air for some ridge lift. There were a few thermals to be had, I hooked one and took it to a couple of thousand over the top, but it was mostly a ridge lift flight.

I got some pretty good video of Ricker, one of the visiting pilots. There were a lot of spectators, although Saturday had a bigger crowd. A photographer from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette showed up and took a bunch of pictures.

We were all hoping that by this time of year, we’d be getting our high altitude days like we sometimes do, but there’s just been too much rain. Lots of days are flyable, but the kind of conditions that we really like haven’t occurred yet this season. 

The Mag labor day fly in is next weekend, and we’re all hoping for a dry week and some nice southerly flow for that.

This year, the Nebo Fly In is taking place on the weekend of 08/23/08. Yesterday, the first day of the event, Donna and I showed up at Nebo mid afternoon, since the morning looked rainy. By the time we rolled up on top of Nebo, the sky had cleared and several pilots were in the air on the east side of the mountain. There were a lot of spectators, summoned to the mountain by an article in the newspaper about the Fly In. Looked like hundreds of folks. Possibly the biggest crowd of onlookers there to watch hang gliding that I’ve ever seen on Nebo. 

Unfortunately, the preceding week had dumped lots of rain in the area, and without a chance for the ground to dry out, lift was weak. Still, it was fun. Some of the visiting pilots took multiple flights. Donna got a flight around 4:30, hoping to catch some of the weak thermals. I got a late afternoon flight in very light ridge lift, and then worked the residual thermals out near the landing field for a little while.

Today is looking like  is should be a better day, and I’m going to be at Nebo by around noon. May try to fly the triangle that I was unable to complete last Sunday. James says the soaring forecast is quite a bit better today.

The forecast for today called for NE winds, sunny skies, and cooler temps. Since the area had received a substantial amount of rain during the week, I didn’t expect it to be very good, but headed for Nebo this morning in hopes of getting a flight.

It turned out pretty good. I got close to two hours, and attempted a triangle task that had turnpoints a few miles west of the mountain, then south, then back to the east. Made the west and south turnpoints with ease, but then had to drive upwind about 8 miles to make the last turnpoint, and that was too much. I got near the last turnpoint, but had lost too much altitude and couldn’t find a thermal anywhere, so I landed near the Dardanelle high school.

Mark tried a different tactic, having gotten the west turnpoint just before I did. He headed back east, made it back over Nebo, and then pushed for the east turnpoint. He got that one as well, but as he was hanging on to some lift near Dardanelle he saw me coming in from the south, and watched me land, then decided instead of attempting to get to the southerly turnpoint, he would just put it down at the sod farm. 

Everybody that showed up got some airtime. It wasn’t a great day, but it wasn’t bad, and was definitely more than I expected. The east side of Nebo can be very inconsistent and unforgiving, but today it treated us right.

It’s Sunday, it’s raining. We flew yesterday…