I flew up at Whitewater on Sunday. Once again, I flew with a camera, and once again, I had camera problems. On my first flight my vario was not working. I'm not sure what's going on with it, but it gets in some wierd mode and I can't get it out. I ended up releasing from tow around 1700' feet (I guess), and turned every now and then. I've gotten pretty good at knowing when I hit lift. You can feel the acceleration in your chest as you are pushed into the harness. I also can feel when I accelerate downward - you get that "i'm floating" feeling. The hard part is knowing when you are in consistant lift or sink. When on glide, I can usually look at the horizon and see rise or sink, but while turning in a thermal at a constant speed, I have no clue if I'm going up or down. I can see it better at low altitudes, but up high I don't stand a chance. Perhaps I am looking in the wrong place. After a 15 minute flight, I got towed up again with a working vario. I released in light lift at 1900'AGL and took it up to 2k, but at that point it was a bunch of light bubbles. After turning in that area for awile, I was at a slight net loss, so I decided to search elsewhere. Thermals are supposed to come from dry, dark field, and will usually be found after a downwind trigger on a windy day. I try to use this while flying. I search 2 or 3 locations that I thought would be good, but found nothing but sink. I was then flying back to the airport when at 700' I felt the pressure in my chest that only a hangglider pilot can really enjoy. I looked down and slightly up wind and what did I find? A swamped field of light color. I started to turn lightly, and then kept trying to find the core of the thermal. I tried using a new technique I learned from Mike Barber in Tennessee, which is to control turn radius with pitch (push in or out) rather than roll (push the bar to the side). In a hang glider, we have good pitch authority with very little effort, whereas roll control takes a lot of muscle. I used to try to get into the core by attempting to roll really hard into the rising air. Remember that when doing so, the rising air that you are trying to get into is actually rasing the wing on that side and trowing you back out. Trying to overcome this will roll control takes a lot of effort. However, if you are already in a turn and feel you are really close on the core, you can push out on the bar. This will slow you down (keeping you in the core longer), decrease your turn radius (keeping you in a tighter circle on the core), and takes very little energy. The slight increase in turn slip and increased spiral dive speed are nothing compared to the upward speed in the core of a thermal. A tight spiral in normal air makes you go down fast, but a tight spiral right in the core of a thermal will make you go up, up, and away. I ended up coring this thermal really well. The vario was showing a constant 300 fpm upward, and I held on for several minutes taking me up to 3500'. It was cold that day, and the temperature + wind chill that high was taking its toll on me. I was shivvering, and my fingers were numb - but not numb enough to make me leave a thermal. Eventually I slowly came back to terra firma, riding a few bubbles on the way. I ended this nice flight with a great no-step landing. Not my best flight ever - but definatly was my best October flight ever.

Flying 'til the cows come home

Here's a picture taken right after I landed on the last day.  There was only one cow there when I landed.  After starting to tear down the glider, I heard a "mooooo".  I turned around to see all of them lined up to great me.

New Video

Here is a video I took on the last day of flying. Unfortunatly the memory card ran out of room right before catching a thermal at 600ft and climbing all the way to the clouds.

TTT Video

Here is a video of lemmings jumping of a cliff. Can you find which one was me?

FLY! Saturday was great!

More pictures in the photo gallery at www.craigstanley.org/gallery

 

I just got home, and will be sure to give last day summary sometime tomorrow.

No Flying ;-(

After 6 straight days of flying, I don't think I will get one in today. The weather is looking bad with low clouds (1k over launch) covering most of the sky and overdevelopment in areas. The good news is that I have a new video for ya'll. Unfortunatly the video stops before I come back into view and climb to 3000 over launch, but still fun to watch. The video is also available at www.youtube.com/cdeggz The weather forcast looks like it should be better tomorrow, the last day of the comp. Saturday night is a party, and then I have the 11 hour drive home on Sunday. -Craig

Having a great time

New Pictures at www.CraigStanley.org/gallery

Since until now I have only been posting from the cell phone, I thought I would give a quick summary of events so far in more than 140 character blurbs.

On Friday I got in with enough time to do some ridge soaring. This was an evening flight with a Strong wind. It was also my first launch off the ramp. I let my nose get a bit to high, and went off the edge without much airspeed and was a bit wobbly. Luckily I was able to recover just fine and made it back 150 to 200 feet above launch. I was then able to soar the ridge for a good amount of time hanging out over launch.

On Saturday I flew with an instructor at Whitwell (the place without the ramp). It worked out nice because he had two tandem flights that day, so I would cliff launch, and then he would go off with a passenger, and then the other tandem customer would drive to pick us up. These flights all went very well, and I was able to get my cliff launch rating.

Yesterday was one of the best flying days I have had since my long flight in Whitewater. I decided to take off very early (people said I was smart for doing so, but I think it was dumb luck and being eager to fly). I was able catch several thermals as they swept up the valley wall. These thermals took me to 3090 feet above launch (launch is ~1500 above the valley floor, which is at ~750 MSL) at one point. I kept racing downwind and getting lucky finding some monster thermals. Many of the people that flew after me found weak conditions, and had to land quick after launching. One pilot had poor judgement and ended up clipping a tree and almost hitting a house on the way in. He had a busted lip, downtube, leading edge, and ego.

After I made it to the C goal (different goal for every group), I hung around above the airport for awhile and then decided I might as well attempt the goal for the B pilots. I made it part of the way back upwind, but at this point conditions were getting worse, and my penetration was poor. High wind speeds and low climb rates make it hard to move into the wind.

My track log from yesterday can be downloaded at www.craigstanley.org/9-30-07.kml

(You may need to right click and select "Save Target As" and then open from your computer)

This should open up the track in GOOGLE EARTH, and zoom in. I recommend looking at the map from the side so you can see the altitude. In the track log you can see where I was turning circles in thermals and going up, and also on glide going downwind. I am interested to calculate my glide angle later on. I feel that I may have been pulling in too much and flying faster than my best glide angle.

Today's flights were quite un-eventful. The lift was very powerful, and very small. It was very difficult to turn in them. Some pilots were able to get high, and after doing so were able to stay high, but my skills were not there. I sank quite a bit after launch. There is a house below launch with a small field the size of a baseball diamond. It was actually kicking off a thermal. I flew above the house there for ~10 minutes, gaining a 40, loosing 30, gaining 30, losing 40, ect. I made it back up almost 250 feet before the thermal seemed to die off, and eventually I got low and had to go head for the landing field (First Baptist Church).

Later in the day, around 4, we went back up to the launch site to get one last flight of the day in. There was no lift left, and hardly any wind. Although it is more fun to fly thermals, it's nice to take a flight every now and then when you know there are no thermals. Then you can take in the view, enjoy the experience, take some aggressive turns, and not be concerned about losing the altitude that you know you will lose anyhow.

I did take several pictures today. Unfortunately I forgot my counter-balance for the other wing This consisted to a tape measure clamped onto my leading edge last time - not sure if that is acceptable in the Boeing manuals. These pictures were taken from the keel and the lack of a wide-angle lens is frustrating. Oh well.

Unfortunately I forgot my computer's power supply, so I have to borrow one. Additionally, the closest wireless signal is a 15 minute drive to the bottom of the mountain, so web updates won't happen very often.

-Craig

Mountain Bike

Looks like I am taking the mountain bike too:

 

http://www.dirtworld.com/trails/trail.asp?id=1611&trail_name=South%20Rim%20Mountain%20Bike%20Trail

 

Forecast for Whitwell, TN

I'm really liking this!

 

The Launch

Here is a photo of the Launch Ramp at Henson's Gap, courtesy of Clark.  I can't wait.

 

Fly

Welcome to my new blog site.  I plan to use this during my vacation to Tennessee for the Tennessee Tree Toppers Challenge - A "fun comp" where we fly for our personal best.  Newbies like me get to fly with experts, and learn more about cliff launching and thermaling.  The focus is not on winning, but rather going distances and shooting for a personal best.

 

So why a blogger and not regular old CraigStanley.org?  Well, the blogging app let's me post via web interface, email, and most importantly, from my mobile phone via SMS.  Since I'm not sure what my internet connection will be like, this opens up new possibilities.  I will be able to type a text message on my phone, and then the next time I get a cell signal (can you say mile high, 3cm antenna) the text message will send and post to my blog.

 

As you may already know, I got a wing-mounted camera working this past weekend.  I plan to fly with the camera most of the week, shooting pictures and video that I will post online when I can find a decent internet connection and some spare time.

 

Be sure to check back often.  I plan to update from September 28th through October 7th.