July 10, Waughs River Valley Flying

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Early morning calm has spread over the Valley. Not a puff of breeze, and high clouds still screen the sweep of this days sunshine

View looking east around 6 A.M

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View west, I did have a good feeling though that the sun was going to break thru

 

 

I finally got a chance around 8 to anchor my turnaround at the North end of the field. There was still no breeze, I was however a little concerned, that If there were to be a bit of a southerly flow, my line would come back down over the high tension wires, some 50 Ft north of my anchor point.

That likely would produce a big bang as a breaker went, melt my line, and bring out the Power folks, and others If someone happened to call 911. :):)

Not the excitement I’m looking for this morning

 

 

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I drove to the south end of the field and anchored my winch, changed out all my batteries and surveyed the sky. Not that I was expecting a long ride but when you have charged spares why not use them.

There was still no breeze, If anything the flags I have out may have been leaning a little west.

The stick with streamers where I launch was showing nothing, and a clear indicator there was little to no air movement was the abundance of blackflies.

I have a special mixture of fly spray which I use and it tends to keep them a foot away.

 

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No eagles or hawks to offer advice, so this launch was gonna lead me to the usual spots where I have found lift in the past. The launch wasn’t the best, as I was looking to release a little early to keep the chute south of the turnaround.

All went well with the launch, I released around 300 ft or so, (a guess) as I have no fancy electronics to measure that.

Soon, I was off, exploring east west north south, looking for bubbles, rising currents anything to latch on to and get some elevation. After about 10 minutes, which was a quite an intense period working the sticks, I come to realize  I could be up for a while.

Ever flown across the Atlantic, the engine drone seems to go on for ever, well that kind of feeling.

Twisting turning, circling, rolling to keep on top of whatever, I stretched the ride out to 35 minutes..

 

Magical, such still air and yet such a wonderful trip. The flies were often in my field of vision and my only distraction, other then a deer huffing off at around the 15 minute mark, I never saw him/her, but they like to get a nip of green grass early in the morning.

Most of the flight was spent working low lift, visibly I was over the field here and only a couple times did I range out when I was able to get closer to 500 ft or so

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At one point I thought I could stretch the ride out beyond 40 minutes, but about 30 minutes in, the overcast was creeping in from the south and obscuring the sun, and sink became more prevalent. So I gave up :):)

 

 

 

 

 

Was it the new hat that brought me the luck, don’t know but it sure was fun:)

This may just be the best day for flying this week, we’ll see

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At 2:30 I had the Elio out , the breeze was certainly above 10 km/h and the best I could do with it was 13 minutes.

Later one last ride with the Supra at 5:30 and that was for 26 Minutes

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