My first tandem flight in 1988 was on a mountain in Southern Calif called Kagel. I started flying hang glider solo in 1990. Since then hang gliding has been my primary interest.
For hang pilots there were Stas, Xan, Neil, Mark Andrews (new PDX hang from Woodrat) , myself and approx couple dozen paragliders flew Cliffside today. I was up for 3.5 hrs on the 2nd flight from 2 to 5:30pm. Very fun day with smooth light winds at launch and landing but also with some decent thermals topping out 2600ft. Neil , myself and few Pgs were able to bench up above the windmills. I don't know about Neil but to me it was a lot of hard worked reached up to the windmills. Since l had two great flights and almost 4 hours of air times today . I'm thinking going home tonight.
I had two soaring flights at Dog today. First flight I was flying alone and second flight was flying with Sunny Jim (hang pilot). It was pretty much no wind at the LZ whole day but blowing light south wind 3-5mph at launch (almost 90 degree cross wind). Fortunately, there was a lot of west straight up cycles (as you can view from my photos & video), so we didn't have to do any cross wind launch. On the first flight I launched around 11:30 and spent about an hour on the south side dancing around a bit before encountering some rocket thermals that took me up to 850ft over launch in just a few short seconds. I landed at 12:30pm and Sunny Jim arrived LZ at 1:00pm.
The condition in the afternoon was silmlar to morning with the exception of being more cloudy. Thermals were very active whenever the sun came out. We punched off around 3pm and it was just a repeat of the first flight and Sunny Jim sky out as well.... So I got my hike up in the morning and had two great flights. Awesome day!
It was yet another great day at Chehalem. While it may be true that a great day at Chehalem is a marginal day most other places, we did spent about an hour in the air and it was quite smile inducing. Gregg and I showed up about 1:15 to find hang pilots Rick and Neal and para pilot Charlie. The hang gliders had got setup after the previous squall seemed to produce stronger launch conditions. The weather looked too strong and too weak and too wet, in different forms, here and there. We kicked rocks a bit then Neal pushed off and showed us what it was like. We kicked rocks some more. After a bit, Gregg launched and was quickly followed by Rick, me, and Charlie. It was fun flying with the Hang pilots. We were all part of the same crew today - supporting each other both in the air and on the ground. Seems to be happening more often these days. Nice. Anyway, everyone landed about the same time at Mr Johnson's farm.
It was raining and snowing heavily on Hwy 6 on the way to Tillamook this morning but plenty of sunshine at Oceanside. I arrived parking lot at 9:15. There was plenty of beach for landing and the winds were on and off blowing 10mph between straight west to NW. At launch, it was almost zero winds with some NE (blowing down) cycles. See photos yourself.
Another great day at Oceanside! This morning we cruised around between Oceanside , Cape Lookout and Terrie Del Mark before deciding to settle at Oceanside. We arrived at the launch around 12:30 and first to punch off was Eric Miller, followed with: Mike C, myself, John B, Gregg and Dave B. All of us had nice flights between 30 mins to an hour. It was easy to stay up with straight west 5- 8 mph winds at launch. We all got a couple hundred feet above launch without much effort and landed around 2pm because beach was disappearing due to high tides.
We went for round two in the afternoon and I launched at 3pm when the tide was going down. The winds were stronger and I was able to reach 900 ft AGL. Steve S launched at 4pm and I think he landed around 5:00pm. So two hangs and six bags flew on this beautiful sunny warm day; special thanks to Laren for the retrieve and rides up.
The wind was really light (0-3mph) when Edwin launched as you can see from the movement of the streamers in this video. Edwin said he didn't even use his speedbar during the whole flight.
After couple hrs of hang waiting. I decided to be the wind dummy.
There was plenty of lift from launch all the way to the end of the Cape. My max altitude gain was 2200 ft MSL . Flight time: 3:11pm to 4:50pm
The winds was kind of cross NNW pretty light at launch.
Congrats to Edwin C on his first flight at Cape Lookout.
There was definitely a wind gradient effect at launch yesterday because the trees were singing , birds were soaring and Steve S RC plane also indicated very soarable..... etc. However there was very light cross NNW wind at launch (see the launch streamers on my video) so we waited for almost 3 hrs to launch. I felt an abundance of smooth ridge lifts immediately once I took off.
Everybody who showed up soared, we just started a little late. Rick, myself, Johnathon, Neil on his newer wing, Steve and paragliders Edwin and Mike Canifax. Here is my flight vario highlights. Really smooth lift everywhere going west point to North point easily. 3200 ft + and 1 hour 45. No squall to deal with and plenty beach. Ray
