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Friday, 6/13/2014 [Weather] and [Flight Articles] by [________] & [Sundowner] [Photos] [Video]
see flight log index for [Tom] [Tess] and [Jacqui Smith's Family]

Friday 6/13/2014  (last day of school in Carpinteria)
Flt 1 ~ Wilcox / Tandem with Tess Truax
Flt 2 ~ Wilcox / Tandem with Jacqueline Smith
Flt 3 ~ Training Hill / Tandem with Heather Smith (Jacqueline's mom)
Bantoo

Sundowner's Flight Report, see also [Weather Archive]

It was the last day of school in Carpinteria.  Tess's school dismissed for the year at 11 followed the annual closing picnic at El Carro Park.  They normally have a large scale water fight after lunch and assorted recreation activities like one legged races a balloon tosses, but this year the water was canceled due to the drought, so we wrapped up around 1:30.  Tess and her friend Jacqueline were scheduled for an afternoon play date at our house, so I was brainstorming activates to keep them off TV.  Jacqueline and her parents Tim and Heather do a lot of outdoor activities like archery and rifle shooting, so I floated the paragliding option and they bit.

We had been having our typical June Gloom with late afternoon clearing accompanied by a healthy sea-breeze when the sun poked through.  At 1 PM the low clouds were starting to break and there was a building wiggle in the palm trees.  The Smith's live in Santa Barbara near Elings Park, so we opted to try Wilcox because it is more scenic than Bates.  Low tide was at 4 PM.  Wednesday's SBA (Airport) reports showed west wind about 10ish by 3 PM, building to 15ish by 5 PM and holding steady past 7 PM, so we opted to let the girls play for an hour at our house and planned to meet Heather at Wilcox around 3 PM.  Getting the girls collected took ten minutes longer than scheduled (as usual) and traffic was heavy, so we didn't get to launch until 3:30ish.

The clouds started thickening rather than thinning and the wind was backing off rather than building.  Initially, we were the only pilots at launch.  Witnesses reported pilots had been up over the trees earlier.  Still looked like there was some texture on the water, and the weak wind lines indicated an excellent direction.  A couple of seagulls came by without flapping, so we opted to try Tess first with light loading, hoping the wind would pull back in.

The physical condition of launch was awful.  Dry dirt with dotted spidery line snagging little plants (ground cover).  If I had an extra 15 minutes and a weeding tool, I'd dig out a clean pull up spot.  A couple truck loads of pea gravel might be a worthwhile enhancement.

After clearing the line snags, Tess and I got off easily with a front pull up on the first try.  We used a little horsepower assist from Heather and bowled her over during our run.  We were skeptical about being able to get up, but despite the light conditions, we were half way up the trees at the end of our first westbound leg and over the trees on the return leg.  The wind velocity was only 5 or 6, but the direction was almost straight in, crossing about 10 to 15 degrees from the right, so there wasn't really an upwind or downwind leg.

Glass smooth air.  I love cruising the tree canopy, but our primary objective was to get Jacqueline and Heather airborne, so we swooped in for a top landing after only a half a dozen laps.  Another local pilot showed up as were laying out again.  Forgot his name, but he flew the day before and said it was strong and cross from the west.  He was a bit hesitant due to the light conditions, but got up over the trees easily and stayed airborne for about a half hour.  I tried to build a wall a couple of times, but wasn't able to manually clear all the ground snags, so I finally did a pickup and laid out closer to the edge in front of the ground cover, and then did a solo pull up to build the shape and set it down further back from the edge.

Conditions continued to get lighter, but Jacqueline only weighs about 80 pounds.  The glider came up asymmetrical requiring some large correction inputs, resulting in Jacqueline falling down a couple of times due to the lateral movement.  We wallowed around a bit, with Tess and Heather acting as our cheerleading squad, encouraging Jacqueline to get back up.  We finally got aligned (after 30 seconds of gyrations) and drove forward over the edge.

It's a spiritual experience for me, sharing someone's first flight through the Wilcox Tree Canopy, and it seemed to be enlightening for Jacqueline also.  It took a full lap before I could let go of the steering handles to help Jacqueline transition from upright to a seated position.  Initially, we were getting over the tree tops, but had to coordinate turns with the other pilot to avoid head on passes which would have required someone going out and around, away from the better lift in close.  We finally got out of sync adn were forced wide a couple of times, only getting half way up the trees.  The other pilot opted to swing in for a top landing and we were able to get back up even with the tops for another pass or two, but we opted for one lap too many in the dying wind and were down to 15 feet above the cliff back at launch heading east (toward the harbor).

I wanted to top land rather than landing down below, so we did our tear drop turn (modified tear drop due to limited clearance) and were even with the cliff heading westbound.  The conservative move would have been to abort the top landing attempt, but I can typically do a flaring turn on the cliff edge, so I let the glider drift in.  Two problems I encountered.  We were a bit low and weren't drifting in very well, so if I put a lot of left into a flaring turn, I was concerned we would touch down and then get pulled back airborne off the cliff toward the ocean.  The other problem was that due to the excellent wind direction for soaring, there wasn't really a pronounced upwind leg, so our westbound leg was mostly cross wind with little or no upwind component.  In hindsight, this seems obvious, but we often need to make quick decisions and I was relying on past experience which didn't actually apply in this scenario.

Bottom line, we committed to the approach and still had significant speed left on touchdown, so it wasn't pretty to put it mildly.  Jacqueline of course, didn't (couldn't) run and we needed to travel a dozen feet to decelerated.  I went over the top and tried to keep my weight off her, putting my hand down (against basic crash advice) and rolling to the right in my attempt to avoid crushing her.  Fortunately, Jacqueline was wearing adequate protection gear, long pants with thick jacket, and her prior boot camp training must have helped also because she seemed unscathed both physically and mentally.  I usually fly with boots and a full suit, but due to the warm weather and expectation that we might be hiking along the beach, I was wearing shorts and short sleeves with no jacket, so I collected an assortment of momentos.

I did a pickup and we stuffed the gear in the back of Heather's vehicle, then drove over to the Elings Training Hill to give Heather a ride.  We could have flown at Wilcox, but it would have been a sleader to the beach and we would have needed to leave the girls on lunch unattended.  Heather's husband Tim had walked up to the Elings launch from their house off to the east.  After the short flight he said, is that it?  Our logic was that I didn't want to pack up at Wilcox in the dirt, so as long as we had the glider out of the bag we might as well give Heather a taste.  Launch and landing were uneventful in light and easy conditions.

Heather and the kids walked back to their house and I took the gear to Parma Park to clean and pack up on the grass.  Cleaning conditions were good with just enough breeze to kite the canopy upside down to shake the debri out.  Heather took the kids for Yo Yum Yums and then dropped tess off at the beach.  Traffic southbound was thick so we took East Valley Road.

Friday, 6/13/2014 [Weather] and [Flight Articles] by [________] & [Sundowner] [Photos] [Video]
see flight log index for [Tom] [Tess] and [Jacqui Smith's Family]

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