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4/20/2001

Bushwacking
Skyport to Beach
Friday Lunch Hour Tandem with Ron Mckown, Linux IT
Galaxy

Full sun in the morning, but building over development.  The lapse rate was good with the 6K temp near freezing.  Casey was Jones'in.  I resisted, but Craig said he'd pick up my glider while he was getting his.  We met Casey, Ron Faoro, and Terry Taggart on launch.  

Ron Faoro climbed out, but it was getting dark.  Casey left launch low, pulled a bad glide against a lower lever SE and flushed into Saint Mary's.  Terry was waiting and we laid out on Top.

The cycle was a little week and fading but we pulled up ok, maybe a little strong.  Had to check the pull up which lifted Ron just a bit (Ron weighs 140 and I was carrying 20 lbs of ballast).  With Ron light on his feet, our run was weak.  I thought of aborting but the canopy was overhead, straight and clean, so I thought we could just run it out.  Shortly after committing, I realized we weren't going to have enough energy.  We hit the top of the first bush and flew out the other side.  We hit the second row lower but still punched out the downhill side.  We had a little more energy now and were starting to fly better, but hit the next one too low and stuck.

I hadn't given a good briefing because I'd flown with Ron about a week before.  We were rushing because it was lunch hour and we pushed to the front of the line.  I didn't take the weight mismatch into account.  Ron was light on his feet, so it was hard for him to run.  Do to the weak briefing, he thought we were ok when he got lifted off his feet after the pull up.  He was heavy enough that I had trouble pushing him with the extra 20 pounds of ballast.  We'd been having good cycles, but this one was getting old.  I thought the cycle would be ok, but after we pulled up it faded   We just needed to run better.

We had a 20" rip on an undersurface seam, mid cord, about half way out.  It took 45 minutes to get back up to launch and airborne.  Pulled a good glide to the Antenna Farm.  The early low level east had given way to building west.  We climbed to cloud base about 35 and took it up to 4.  It would have been downwind to Carp, but we were late, no radio, and no chase, so we flew back to work.  Craig joined us and did some aerobatics over the beach.  We pushed upwind to Garden Street, but the tracks were in the lee of a west wind with light caps on the water.  I wasn't felling pushy, so we fell back to East Beach for another sweet landing on the grass.

Casey boosted us back to Parma and we took Ron's car up to get Craig's truck.  3½ hours door to door.  We used up a few lunch hour brownies on that one.

SD