WEATHER
Visibility: Averaged 5 miles.
Wind: 4 MPH was the highest gust reported all day at the NWS station across the street.
Altitudes: Whatever you were released at, save for Andrew.
Time Aloft: Andrew, 1-1/2 hours.
Max Lift:
Temperature: 54° @ 9:00, peak of 68° shortly before 2:00
Comment: Good "shake off the rust" day. Weather was fantastic, air quality was terrible.
Tow pilots: Dan Gudgel and Harold Gallagher.
The RASP was not predicting much lift for the day. Not a surprise for middle of January. Peter Sahlberg said, "I got 120 FPM....for 120 milliseconds."
Andrew was able to go to the west side of the ridge and find lift. Those of us on the ground were mostly talking about the "sled rides" and poor visibilities when somebody noted that Andrew had been gone a long time. Talking afterwards he stated that he could have stayed up longer, but wanted to get down early enough so that he could leisurely disassemble the glider and put it in the trailer.
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| RASP was not predicting mush lift. It was spot-on. |
Early arrivals came across a geo-exploration/surveying crew working on the gliderport grounds. It was a little bit disconcerting, as none of owners present knew anything about it. After some discussions, everybody seemed to be happy. Dan even took the foreman, Rex, up for a ride.
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| Some of the geo-exploration/surveying equipment between runway 7-15 and the south fence. |
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| One of the pieces of equipment, probably the transmitter. |
Harold and Dan swapped towpilot duties during the day.
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| Harold about to do another launch. |
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| Dan Gudgel is giving Philip Gerfaud instruction prior to Philip's first flight in our 2-33. |
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| Graeme McIntosh is running the wing for Philip on his first takeoff. |
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| Philip's first landing. |
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| Just a couple of inches from Philip's third and last landing for the day. Welcome to CCSC! |
For a day in January, there was an impressive amount of activity. In the picture below are seven people, plus one in the towplane, plus one behind the camera. Jan Zanutto and Martin Casakey were also out earlier looking at parts of the "Big Bird Project." Eleven people that I can account for, and I may have missed others.
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| Seven people and (parts of) four sailplanes are in this picture. |
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| Tyler Bishop has just broke ground in the 1-26. |
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| Peter Sahlberg has company as he awaits the towplane to return. |
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| Six observers plus Andy Reistetter in the pilots seat. |
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| Andy, the canopy and your hat look real close to each other. |
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| Tyler Bishop is hooking up Graeme McIntosh. |
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| Andrew Ouellet is all smiles and giving a "thumbs up" to launch his recently acquired sailplane |
Traffic Alert! Andrew's launch is held when the helicopter supporting the geosurvey is over the field and moving in a path that we cannot predict.
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| Finally Andrew gets to launch. |
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Overall, a pretty good day, and if you consider the date, January 10th, it was an exceptional day!
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