The AHGA's XC Contest 2009

I was last to tow today. High cirrus moved in and I had to take a second tow. I hooked up with Dustin and his last remaing student just south of Arizona City. We went on a long glide together and got really low, I missed the lift they found and my day was over.

Flew with Dustin's XC students the first 30 miles. Got low just north of Picacho pk, drifted with a weak thermal to the summit of Picacho and buzzed the hikers- big mistake, got rotored on the south side and was looking for a place to land away from the ostridge farm. Another weak thermal over I-10 turned into the only cummi of the day for me and enough to get me into goal at Marana 5 min behind Dustin.

But so what: I'm posting it anyway. A slightly enhanced sledder that went beyond the normal LZ but landed well within glide isn't XC flying. It'll give me points though and I'll take 'em

A few of us hucked off. A couple of paraglider pilots were there and got flights as we were setting up HGs. Jorge landed just behind launch, which worked out good cuz he let me borrow his wife's vario (that used to be Kunio's). Had it in a pouch on the harness so as it turns out I couldn't hear nothing from it till I was back on the ground. Thanks Jorge! I gave it to Jerry to get back to you. From the HG side of town there was Allen, Jerry, Shiraz, John from down south, bad Randy, Mark, and ... uh ... ... crap I forg.. ah: Kris.

Long story short: had a fairly decent launch, learned a really fundamentally cool thing about how to get into this pod harness nicely after launch, got up a wee bit, still flying the glider way too fast, decided after one pass on the ridge that what I really needed was a nice landing, so I went out to land at the schoolyard. 1.2 miles, 10 minutes. This should not be allowed to get distance points but it will. A flaw in the code? yeah. My code? yeah. Am I gonna fix it before I post this? NO!

I need to secure the backstrap when I'm prone. Doing that this time, because it came undone before my hang check, kept the leg loops tight and the shoulder straps up off my shoulders as I was building the glider. Stepping into the boot was a total no-brainer.

Was it lifty? Oh my yes. I flew through something nice but was pretty much set on re-associating with the glider and free flight, and just flying. So I didn't really try to work anything. Just dug on the pretty girls working on their tans and waving at some kids who were waving up at me ... and landing in a field where a family was playing ball with their kid. Damn. Okay so move on. There's another field and a gentle south means the other field is better. Bleed off altitude above them so their ball isn't my worry, then cut over that little tree line, hit it left, and glide on in. Unfortunately the left turn wasn't as smooth as it should have been, and I still had a lot more energy than I should have. Rocked upright and let all that speed turn into altitude. Not much, but enough to make me think that baseball field backstop up ahead was going to be where I "land". I didn't: I only got to second base

First real actual flight in a year and a half, though Mark reminded me of an afternoon flight I had at Mingus. That had to be after the hernea surgery, but wow I can't place it in time.