Rick Lai's Hang Gliding report : April 2017

Video link enclosed of Oceanside and Cape Lookout flights with paraglider Mike Canifax and Pete Reagan on last Thursday. Camera didn't have enough battery for the CLO landing.
https://youtu.be/gzAgZfoGufM

Oceanside was sunny and warm with buttery smooth lifty air early afternoon. I launched at 1pm in 3 to 5mph straight up wind and flew for over an hour. Paraglider Mike Canifax launched 30mins later to join me and we found much better lifts at Happy Camp. l topped out 800ft (I think Mike got 1000ft). The winds turned more north plus tide was coming so we headed back to Oside and landed at 2pm. Only me and Mike flew so far.

I just arrived Cape Lookout launch at 3:30pm. The trees behind the road is shaking and wind condition at launch is about 5-10mph WNW with plenty of sunshine. Unfortunately, still no beach for landing yet. High tide at 2:30pm today???

Rick 3:24pm

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Cape Lookout report from Peter Reagan

Cape Lookout was fun. I arrived up at launch at about 3 but although the wind was about 8 mph fairly straight in, the tide was so high I drove the car back down, scouted landing areas, and then carried my glider back to Anderson’s Viewpoint where Rick and another hang pilot had recently arrived. Weather looked good and tide beginning to go out so I launched into abundant lift for 1.5 hours. After about an hour one of the hang pilots launched… I’m not sure which. For a paraglider the wind was fairly strong up high, maybe about 15-17 mph, but with a bunch of speed bar I always had great penetration. I flew out to the tip of the cape and also east onto the northern extension of the ridge. Sometimes there are strong thermals over there but not today… just relentless ridge lift. Back out over the cape, I got into an ocean thermal with 4 adult eagles.. amazing… then shortly thereafter the hang pilot was adopted by 2 3 year old eagles, one of whom was diving at his wing and buzzing him… I think for fun. Then they came over and up to me and started horsing around in my neighborhood. Infuriating that my goPro didn’t have a charge on it..
A couple of minutes after the eagles left I watched a bird at about my attitude of 1300 ft careen past me out to sea and recognized his pointy wings and hooked beak as a peregrine. That was fun too…. and he was SO FAST!
Anyway sometime after 5:30 there was a siginificant cell a bit NW and out to sea so I did everything I could to dump altitude and land, on the newly available beach, since the tide was receding.

Good day.
Pete

PS Oh yeah… the squall went by to the north and turned out to be no threat.

Oceanside Photos