Video from yesterday at Cliffside
At Cliffside today, there was 3 hangs and about 10 bags who flew . It was overcast with really light winds, and the cloud ceilings were below the windmills for the whole day. Mark, myself and a few bags took a morning sled ride, launching and landing in zero wind condition. Mark did a great job landing by the river. It was pretty much dead calm from morning till 2pm and no sign of solar heat produced thermal. Than it started with light SE breeze (approx 3 mph) around 2:30pm, so we thought it would be an all day sled ride condition. However, around 2:45pm I saw a few paras thermaling on top of the hang launch, so I launched and headed towards the paras and discovered a lot of strong climbs; thanks to the para friends for directing me to the lifts! Surprisingly, the thermals were even better than yesterday with no sunshine. I topped out 2k AGL got to the cloud base and flew for an 1 hr /15mins. It was getting close to sunset and still found smooth thermals everywhere, so I'd crossed the Columbia River towards the Oregon side before landing. I had a light whack on my landing due to flying too close to the bathroom structure. At the very end of the left side of my the wing tip slightly touched the restroom structure a second before I flared. Fortunately, the ground speed was down to almost zero; so with having no speed, there wasn't any damage or even a scratch on the sail. Everything was good but I was upset at myself for messing up on my landing since the condition at LZ was completely smooth. I didn't expect a long flight so I've put the GoPro camera on the glider nose, unfortunately the SIM card was full at the end of the flight and couldn't capture my almost perfect landing. I enclosed a image of how I messed up and hope others can learn from my mistake.
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