Sylmar Hang Gliding Association

Yesterday’s flight ended in extreme frustration with me crying and pounding the ground. From previous years I thought that the lift shut off at 5pm and whoever was the highest, glided the farthest. So, I thought, make as much distance as you can during the “good� part of the day. If I wasn’t climbing, I should be moving along. Watching the replay at night I saw people behind me making goal. It was time for a new plan. Get higher last longer, that’s the ticket! I can’t win but leaning from my mistakes is its own reward, or so a friend told me. Today I launched near the back of the pack. My first tow I came close to buying the farm. We flew into a blue dust devil at two hundred feet. At the end of the runway the tug shot up. I push out to climb with it. Then the tug dropped an equal amount and I was left stalled. My left wing dropped and I was in a 90 degree bank. I pinned off, leveled me wings, shivered me timbers and flew back for a re-tow. Good landing. The second tow was with Bobby Bailey and went exceedingly well. He dropped me off in a thermal and I climbed to 6k with two sport class gliders. The wind was close to 20 mph and they drifted away from the first turn point. I headed on course consciously abandoning my new plan to get high. I went for about 8 miles before I found another thermal. I was only a thousand AGL. I hung with it averaging less than a hundred up. The drift was atrocious and I ended up over downtown Casa Grande. I did manage to climb 2500 feet. I went on glide again and found a better climb a mile east of town. This one averaged 300 up and I got back up to 6k before I lost it. Six thousand sounds like a lot by Kagel standards. It’s not in Arizona. The other pilots were getting up to eight thousand before going on glide. Anyway that was my last one. I landed 5 miles before the first turn point. Good landing except for the cow pies and the barb wire fence and of course the lesson not learned.