Flight Articles from Saturday 9/2/06 (in order of posting time stamp)
[Chip Bartley] [Randall] [South Side] [Robb Milley] [Ron Meyer]

John Scott (aka South Side)

Saturday, 9/2/06
Pint to Mojave

Came up with the Kagel crew on Sat.  First HG off on a demo Lightspeed.  Climbed out nicely after launch drifting OTB.  Phil Bloom was quick to join me.  We switched places a number of times in the punchy cores waiting for the other pilots to catch up and trying to decide which way to go.  There was line of clouds out to Abel and nothing immediately in the Chute so my first thought was to head in that direction.  But it seemed that the clouds running east from Abel were a bit too north to bridge back to Frazier in the SW wind.  We ended up just B-lining it to Lockwood Valley on a line between the Chute and Dry Canyon.  I stopped to work some light lift at the start of the Badlands that let Phil and Seabass (Atos) get ahead me.  The lift didn't pan out and so now I was in catch up mode.  About 3/4 of the way to Lockwood those two guys found a strong core; I came in underneath but was immediately spit out of the lift.  I didn't get upside down, but if someone happened to be above me I'm sure they would have seen my under-sail.  Anyway, once I got the glider level I tried the core one more time but couldn't find it and so I took my altitude and headed right for Lockwood.

Down to just below 8k at the start of the valley, but it didn't take long to find a thermal.  Climbed out to 11 plus and headed to Frazier.  Got down pretty low on the east end of the valley before climbing out again to 12k.  The SW wind was blowing fairly strong and so I was having a bit of a problem penetrating to the main spine from my starting position.  Despite the beautiful clouds I didn't find any lift until just east of the towers.  There I found the strongest lift all day and climbed out to 14,500.  Went on the glide to the Tehachapis and continued to climb another 1,000ft.

Phil, Seabass and now Tony were ahead of me reporting the lack of lift after their long glides from Frazier.  All had fudged out into the Antelope.  It wasn't until just west of the military (?) instillation that the first reports of light lift came over the radio.  I finally had a visual on Phil and came in underneath of him at about 6k as he climbed out over the instillation.  Seabass had already made the connection and was reporting that he was topping out at 14k.  It was a slow climb but I eventually made it up to about 13k myself.

There was a nice cloud street back toward Kagel so it was decided that we would head in that direction despite the headwind.  At that point I was a bit south of the other guys so I was now in the lead -- just as my radio went dead.  However, the cloud street was shifting to the east and it became quickly apparent that I wasn't going to catch up to it on my course line.  I turned NE to a cloud just southeast of Soledad mine.  There, it was another slow climb back to 11k.  Looking down I noticed my PTT and head set terminals dangling from my shoulders; plugged them in and viola, I was back on radio frequency -- just in time to find out that the other two guys had changed their minds and were now heading to Mojave.

Unfortunately for me my motion sickness kicked in at about the same time and so I announced on the radio that I was just going to take my altitude and glide as far as I could go and land.  That I would be somewhere north of Mojave on the 14.  On the glide north Phil came over the radio to say that he was low near the new 14/58 junction and that he would probably be landing soon.  I flew in right above him as he landed.  I was at 7k but decided to circle down to land next to him (73 Miles).

Seabass was also nearby but decided to take advantage of the day and continue on.  He would end up flying to the rest stop north of Little Lake for a 124 mile flight.  Tony would end up landing at the same spot on Sunday.

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