Day Two - Big Springs

The picture on the left is explained below. The video above shows a landing of a relite into the airport LZ which also shows a little bit of how strong the winds were.

Todays task was the longest ever called in a competition - ever. 214 miles! And I bet some people will make it too. Eric, Ollie, Stump and I were some of several pilots who chose not to fly today because the conditions were so strong. A tug almost got flipped over while it was on the ground! So that was a big indication that it might be too strong for me. Everyone was anxiously awaiting the first tow to see how it went, and the weak link broke fairly quickly. Despite that, people slowly began to start a launch line and most people launched today. James Stinnett did decide to fly and we all helped him into a cart and he got off safely, I guess we'll here if he made it when he gets home at 3am.

There were no clouds today though and some people had to relight. Where we were towing from was very close to the hangars (see picture below and notice everyone intently watching to get a clue to the conditions) and so if you locked out to the right on tow you were headed for the hangars. Yesterday we were further back on the runway so that was not an issue.

The GPS photo in the top left is from Eric's flight yesterday. He made goal and landed at the airport everyone else did, but his GPS didn't agree with him. If you look at the dotted line that comes close the the circle labeled 'Brown' it shows how close he came to the goal circle. He was supposed to fly inside the circle at some point, but since he was looking down at the airport and landed there, he assumed he had made it. In the end, he came 20 feet away from it! So he lost a lot of points there, and he says he'll never make that mistake again! Dustin Martin told him not to worry, he'll probably do that a dozen more times.

I am glad we decided not to fly today: we're safe, it will be a good rest day and we enjoyed some free Blue Bell ice cream in the pilots lounge, and Eric took a nap. He's apparently going to get me back some how for posting this picture, but it's worth it.