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

Ron Meyer

Saturday, 9/2/06
Pine Mountain

Another interesting day at Pine.  On board we had 10 grizzled veterans and one Pine virgin.  The virgin kept us all entertained with his curiosity and playful enthusiasm on the way to launch.

The veterans, of course, laid it on thick with wild tales of near death experiences, 10 mile away land-outs, sleeping in manzanita, and surviving 5 day hike-outs without food or water. Yeah, whatever.  Everyone was full of it except for me.

Cycles at launch were lulling from 0 to 7 when we arrived and Ron Faoro demonstrated the day was working.  I launched 5th and took my launch thermal to 10K in short order.  After a brief pause at 10K, I hooked into another fattie and found myself on glide to Lockwood Valley with 15,300.

Halfway to Lockwood, I began hitting some massive sink and realized I was flying in a blue hole between cumi's over Lockwood and cumi's forming deep over Mt. Abel/Mt. Pinos range.  I made a quick northward correction and joined Brendan in a climb from 8 something to 13K.

All the while the radio is lit up with happy Topa chatter.  Everyone was over the back by this time... and most were halfway to Frazier.

Of course, the day isn't going to be any fun unless there's some annoyance and that came in the form of a vindictive ham operator who started taunting us.  Is it just me or is every ham operator a 48 year old guy with a pet chicken who's never kissed a girl?  I'd love to invite one to our Xmas party this year just to find out.  That might be entertaining.

After the guy with the chicken finally let up I found myself over Lake of the Woods with about 9K.  I joined Tom Pipkin and we both found ourselves parked, going from 0 to 5 mph, fighting a strong SW flow.

We both fought to get over to the SW side of Frazier but it was just too hard.  Tom climbed to 12K and announced he was heading OTB over the grapevine.

Now, flying toward Bakersfield has always been on my wish list as I've never made that flight before, so I decided to do the same.  I found some lift to take me to 14.5 K and flew north OTB.

For the next 10 minutes my groundspeed was 50+ mph while flying almost directly over the grapevine.  I was passing trucks and making them look bad.  Eventually, my groundspeed began to wane to 30..to 20...to 10 mph...and then to 0 mph.  I was parked heading North.

Just as I began entertaining thoughts of a high wind landing, I dropped through that layer of air and found myself descending through an inversion and the last few thousand feet in virtually still air.  I landed off the 99 fwy in a sandy field in a 4 mph headwind.

1400 fpm up, 1400 fpm down
highest altitude 15,800
36.5 miles

Hearing Chip's excitement, accidentally leaving Randall behind, making fun of the chicken man on the way home...
priceless