Flights 44 to 47

I heard it was going to rain on Thursday – which may very well be the last rain of the season here in southern CA – and decided to head out to Torrey on Tuesday this week. The winds were very light in Del Mar. I didn't think there was enough to fly, but I drove out to Torrey any way just to check in and perhaps attach my speed bar.

When my wife bought my harness for me I had only been taking lessons for a few months. There was no need for a speed bar. It's a great harness: a ki2fly, made by one of the instructors at Torrey, Ki. What could be better than buying a product you can return to the actual designer, not just the reseller.

Another cool thing, I was up since 5:30 this day working my ass off, starting at a computer screen for hours. By 2 o'clock I was fried. I can't think of any better antidote to software development fatigue than getting up in the air.

When I arrived it looked weak, maybe 5 - 8 mph. My friend Daniel was there and some other rogues that I've been noticing around the joint lately. Bill was happy to see me. I stated my pessimism and was met with stares. Then Daniel said, "Look at that guy." Sure enough, there was more than enough lift. Why am I such a pessimist all the sudden?

When I told Ki I had no speed bar he ran out to his car and got one out of his trunk. I asked Bill if he'd help me attach my speed bar before I got going. Of course, as my instructor, Bill walked me thorough all aspects of not only attaching the bar but how to use it an things not to do.

When I got my wing up conditions were no different, light. I didn't want to go to the beach, but nobody seemed to be doing that so I swallowed my pessimism and launched. The air was great, remarkably smooth.

I've been wearing a vario lately. I bought a FlyTec 4020 pro at Gabe's recommendation. It's already helped me quite a bit. First of all it's a kick to know how high you actually are but far more importantly you begin to develop a sense of what's happening with your flight: how much altitude are you losing in turns, when are you in sink, what is your change in altitude when you feel different things, especially turbulance.

Flight 44: Torrey is 330 MSL ( mean sea level ). I adjusted my vario accordingly and took off. Right away I got 30 feet of lift and when I hit the north ridge I plateaued at 400. That was about all I got for the whole day. It wasn't the strength of the wind but it's consistency. It was just plain easy to do everything, calm, peaceful.

I stepped on the speed bar to see what would happen. It turned out I had tied up much too loose. It really didn't have much of an effect pulling down only an inch or so fully out.

As the wind was slightly north I landed from the south and caught up with Bill again to adjust. This time Ivan, an instructor visiting from Italy joined us. He was doing some acro moves out over the ocean when I was gearing up. I told him that he inspired me last time he was here. It was another light day. He was just kiting, but he was ripping the shit out of his wing. Very cool. I never looked at kiting the same again. I pull asymmetric collapses and just dick around with the lines all the time now, often violently, just to see what will happen, all because I saw him kite one day. I thanked him.

Flight 45: Another trip up with the tightened speed bar and gave it another go. Much different this time and I really got a lot of value out of the vario. You could see the slight loss of altitude when I pressed on the bar and just visually I could tell I was going faster. I dicked around a bit, braking for some time then stepping on the bar. I want to bring it in another 2 inches to get the full use out of it.

Flight 46: was just pleasure. There was no one in the sky, no one went to the beach, there was just no one there. I flew this time around the south ridges. There's a double rimmed ridge just to the south that I'd never really played around on. Again, I always had 1 eye on the vario. I didn't lose much altitude when I thought I would, or rotor, but I was starting to get low. With no one at all in the sky I scraped up to the ridge right in front of the LZ and by the time I was on the north side I was well above MSL. On the north side I really got some good lift this time, heading up to, but not quite touching 500. When I came in for my landing I went way out over the ocean to lose some altitude. I did my best to spot some whales, but just saw the clear blue Pacific.

I've noticed that 370 is a good altitude to come in on the south side. I did a nearly perfect pinpoint landing.

Flight 47: was just for fun. I think of the Sons of the Pioneers song sometimes, "One More Ride", when I'm taking my last ride. I suppose there are a dozen others that could take it's place, but that frontier feeling is strong here on the ridges in California. This was just a normal ride, looking around a bit more casually than usual, plenty of crows as partners. I swung south and started my landing approach when something told me, "Stay up."

I've mentioned before how important my intuition is. I never ignore it. Even if the consequences were huge I would never go against it. And, when I tell most people that they tend to think "Safety First." Well, in fact, I would never fly when my intuition told me not to. But, the other side of this is that sometimes that little voice tells you when to rip it up, or just have fun. This was such a time.

I headed back to the north ridge and got some real lift, well above 500 to nearly 600. I dove out over the ocean doing some s-turns, not quite wing-overs. I was just in love and having fun. What a great time.

Finally the watch told me I had to get down if I was going to spend any time with my kids tonight. I pulled in for another south landing and a moment of bliss.

As I made my way up the hill to fold my wing I thanked Bill. He asked me to pull 2 more inches of slack out of the speed bar. Will do.

When I got back home I hooked up my vario to my pc, correction, my daughter's pc. This software/hardware combination is at minimum 10 years old and requires a serial port. I haven't had a serial port on my pc since I ran windows 95. What a piece of crap!

I installed and tried to enter my registration information, failed over and over again. I gave up. When I contacted flytec via email the next day they said to use a dot not a dash as was shown on my authorization card. Like I said, a real piece crap.

This software, and the whole protection model is so old it's laughable. I can't imagine this is as good as it gets. This thing will accept input from a gps and make a pretty map, but that's not on my list yet. When I start doing some XC flying I'll get to that. Perhaps I'll write something for the web that shows your charts in google maps as well. What a joke!