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Dean Stratton
The Weekend of September 10th, 11th, and Monday the 12th
[Monday's Track Map and Altitude Profile]  [Weekend Photos]
[Monday's Track log MPS file]

With a good portion of the Topa flyers gone in Italy and the local flying conditions weak at best lately, this board is looking like a ghost town.  Finally, this weekend gave us something to talk about.  In fact, the flying was so good this weekend that I'd swear it was November if I didn't know better.

Saturday, I headed out to Marshall for the annual fly-in.  It was some of the best flying I've had at Marshall in a long time.  Cloud base around 6500', light wind, and climb rates well over 1000 fpm.

I talked with Bo Saturday night and he told me how much fun they were having in SB that day as well.  The weather checked out for Sunday and several of us showed up at launch around 11:30 to OD.  CB wasn't much more than a couple hundred over launch and it stayed that way for some time.  The winds and lift were very light.  Most climbs were 200-300 fpm and the majority of pilots were low over the antenna farm, including myself.  In fact, I spent close to a half hour "Polishing the Rock"; as Bo terms it, well below the antenna farm over the road before I finally scratched my way up.  Bo, Jim, my dad and I landed, had lunch and came back around 2:30 for a much better second flight.  Strong climbs and plenty of cumis made for a great second half of the day.  We flew to East Beach and took in the scenery.

Now I should've been working but the weather looked so good for Monday that we had to come back out.  7 of us piled in Bo's truck and we arrived at launch just after 11 to a perfect sky.  I launched first and found myself "Polishing the Rock" again briefly, but I worked back up and joined everyone else over the thermal factory.  Bo and I did a lap around the fish bowl while Brendan headed East down range.  Brendan was making good progress so Bo and I got in the congo line and headed East.  Fortunately there was plenty of lift because cloud base wasn't high enough to give us much more than a glide to the very next peak.  Hitting every peak slowed things down a bit but we were in no real hurry, we were having too much fun.  Down around Castle we could see CB was very low through the pass so Brendan headed out to the beach to meet Kristi and Bo and I turned around and headed back.  Winds were still light so we had no problem coming back.  Bo tried to top land at the by-pass (below the thermal factory) to retrieve his truck but got too low and had to bail out to St. Mary's.  I continued on, tagged West Bowl, came back to the TF and did a couple more laps around the fish bowl before calling it quits around 2:30.  Bo and I celebrated the great day with lunch near the university, but that's another story...

One of the last things said before the gang left for Italy was, "Of course, as soon as we leave the flying will get good".  Well, that's exactly what happened and I can't help but laugh. This has happened too many times to be a coincidence, too funny...

Most of my pics are from Marshall on Sat. but I got a few from Skyport:

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/fllspdahd/album?.dir=/2d44&.src=ph