I was up to Walter's place in Tatamagouche on Sunday.
The Thermal conditions were crazy. Let's hope this coming Saturday in Lantz has even a bit of that activity.
I was practicing winch launches using my Elio, a 2.5m wingspan RES from Whacker Sailplanes (not a real company, the Elio is a design based on the Sagitta 900, designed and built by Walter). Whacker is Walter's handle on RCG.
Walter did the first launch and then handed control to me. WOW what a flight. I had enough altitude that the 2.5m wing appeared to be about 1/4" across. Had to have been in excess of 1000' . I had to work at not going up at a ridiculous rate. Wish I had telemetry/altimeter in the plane . Lift was everywhere, even seagulls were thermalling. And a couple of eagles, but they were way up there. We showed the gulls how its done and the eagles made us look like beginners. When I decided to come down I opened my spoilers fully and it still took along time to come down.
The next couple of launches didn't work so well...popping off at around 100-150' but still managed to get 2-4 mins. Need some more practice to get a handle on the tapping of the pedal so as to not over stress the plane while still keeping her climbing and not stalling.
The Last flight was a pretty good launch with me on the pedal and Walter throwing. The flight lasted 34min 21sec( neck getting sore and almost time to head for home) and spent most of that above 700' . When I decided to come down I put her in a spiral. When I was low enough I straightened out to make my landing approach and when I turned for the downwind... she started going up again...Walter laughed as I said out loud " Stop that".
Here are a couple of pictures that Walter took when he wasn't laughing at me( not really).
Sunday's soaring in Tatamagouche
- AndrewS
- Posts: 838
- Joined: Thu Oct 02, 2008 8:23 am
- Location: Bedford, Nova Scotia
Sunday's soaring in Tatamagouche
Andrew Smith,
HEFA 3
MAAC 76250
HEFA 3
MAAC 76250