Weekend Flying

Yesterday I was invited to fly at a really nice site only 20 miles from Lookout. Those in the pictures are David Giles, Ollie Gregory, James Stinnett, and Greg Heckman. Ollie and Dave made it back to Lookout, but James, Heckman, and I went so lucky. We ended up being drivers. I was able to stay up for 20 minutes or so but couldn't do much with it. (I think you can click the pictures for bigger versions).

Also, the other day, Eric was trying the hanging camera below his control frame and the cord snapped on him and his camera tumbled into the trees. He was ridge soaring at the time so it gave us a good idea of where to look and he eventually found it! It was totaled but he got the SD card out of it.

I'm waiting to hear from the Full Throttle contest, the 'official rules' say they'll contact on or around Nov.1 the winner. Last contest it took them a while past the date they said, so either that's true again, or I'm not the winner. They haven't updated their page yet either. I'll also find out if I'm in the Excedrin youtube contest finals on the 12th.

Comp Dreaming

After going to the Competition Committee meeting I am ready for some comps already! I was planning on East Coast and Big Spring, but Big Spring will interfere with our wedding/honeymoon, so I am crossing my fingers for a meet in Florida to come about.
There's been some interesting discussion about Nationals on HG.org here:
http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=9079&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=100

Check out the poll I've started and vote how you think Nationals should work! Since only a few people look at this site the poll might not be statistically powerful . . . but who cares what crotchety old stats professors would think about it!

Excedrin Contest

Hi all-

I just uploaded a new video to youtube for another video contest. The deal with this one is they will pick the top 8 out of all the entries to go on to the voting round. So until then, check it out and rate it high so it looks good and I get into the top 8!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nZfJjRrEb4

Weekend Update -

It was an exciting weekend starting with Friday's USHPA Competition Committee meeting.

I entered into a new world of hang gliding where there seems to be much history of ill feelings towards others within the competition community which is unfortunate and puts a bad taste in my mouth as a new comp pilot. Unfortunately, this history seems to affect the attitude and judgment of those involved to where they can not view the situation objectively and the comp pilots are the ones that suffer. I'm glad I went and I learned a lot, but it's not what I had expected. I would write more but I'm afraid a post like that would just perpetuate the negative impact the internet may have contributed to the current situation.

Saturday I flew for about 2 hours, got 2,400' over launch and had a good time. I was heading to the point when I heard fireworks, then I noticed little orange disks flying off the bluff. It wasn't fireworks, but someone shooting skeet off of the bluff that I was only 200' over! I turned around because I didn't want to get shot on the way back if I was lower. Living in North Georgia keeps you on your toes! Many people flew that day, once I landed at 6pm, there were still about a dozen gliders in the air. That night was the Halloween party and an experienced tandem guy, Mike Labato, won as a one-night stand. All of the pictures Ray took are at: http://photos.visioncomm.net/index.cfm?Lib=37

I've finished a video that I will post for a video contest soon, maybe tomorrow.

USHPA Board Meeting

Last night there was a little get together before the meetings started, it seemed well attended by all the USHPA people and there were Treetoppers there to greet them with a goody bag of treetopper shwag.

I'm going to go to the competition committee meeting today and be a cheerleader for Big Spring and a multi-meet nationals.

Looks like some NW wind is coming our way, so it should be flyable soon, it will give me a chance to work on some videos . . . stay tuned for those!
I figured out how to mount a camera on the wingtip pretty darn easily, thanks to Moyes' zipper by the tip wand-leading edge junction: (check out the bird in lower left)

Team Challenge Launches

Here are some of the launches from Team Challenge that Keith Atkins filmed.

A little blown out

Today was a little blown out. I tried posting a video, but blogger is screwing up and I can't post one. I was able to fly but it was really crappy on the ridge especially in comparison to last night's nice smooth wonder wind.
Anybody else think this is the coolest groom's cake they've every seen? The middle one was banana bread and the bricks were a different kind of cake.

Yesterday's flight

Got about an hour yesterday, thanks to Marc Fink for showing me where lift was, I think he was too low to get it and he landed, but thanks to him, I knew where to go. I climbed out to about 2,000' over launch looking at all the gliders in the lz I thought I would be the only one to get up, but I noticed a glider about 800' higher than me! It was Greg Heckman of course. I launched at about 4:00 from the Bandit so I'm sure Greg launched much earlier. I only had about one more climb and got to 3,000' over launch to cloudbase. My zipper got stuck when I was pulling it up and on my attempt to unstick it by unzipping it, the actual zipper came unloosed from one side. So I gave up trying to stay up since i was having to hold my legs up. Anyone know how to get humpty back together again? It's like unzipping a sleeping bag all the way, but then not being able to start at the end. Somehow I have to just jam one side of teeth through that little slot on the zipper. Check out my Team Challenge video, and come next year!

Team Challenge Video

Ticket to a Litespeed

This is how I got my Litespeed S - Thanks Lipton!

Final Day

The winning team - Thermal Underwear. Yesterday's inversion at about 5,600'.

The morning after the last day everyone is packing up and heading out for their long or short drives home. It was a very successful meet and lived up to its name of Team Challenge and reputation of being the best place to learn xc with a bunch of other people and have a great time!

I learned a lot from Mike Barber, Jim Lamb, Dennis Pagen, Terry Presley, Kevin Carter, and all the other great pilots around here. This meet is priceless and I urge any H2 to go out and get their H3 by next year so they can attend this meet. I even had Dennis Pagen measuring my sprogs yesterday!

Yesterday was a tough day for some but I was able to scratch low and got up with a handful of other pilots, and more were able to climb out later on too. I think all the rigids ran the course, I don't think any C's made goal, and I know at least 2 B's made their goal. Our B's and C sunk out and so Eric and I made the first lap to the C goal and back and our other team members still had some time before they'd be ready to setup again. So we headed off again to complete our task with a second lap. We used the clouds down the ridge to get us perpendicular to the waypoint and then ran across the valley to get the waypoint and hit a little climb in the valley on the way back. I really need to get a final glide feature on a vario, because I didn't really know if I could make it back to the lz or not so I took one last climb and made it back. My luck of hitting a climb didn't happen for Eric who left a climb lower than me and that was probably the difference, he said, that he came up a mile short of goal.

I never saw the scores for yesterday and I haven't seen them posted around, but I can say that my team won! Team Ohio came in second after overtaking the E team in the middle of the week. I didn't know if we could pull it out, but I think we managed to win by maybe two hundred or more points. Of course, everyone here will say that's not what it's about, and I agree, but it is nice to win once in a while. The best thing to take away was all the experience and seminars that will hopefully keep us lower air time pilots from having to take the time to figure this out for ourselves. Instead, we are able to come to a meet like this and take advantage of all the great pilots who have so much more experience than us. I look forward to next year!

I'll try to edit together a video soon!

Penultimate Day - Toughest Conditions yet

The leader of the Air Hogs, Mark Stump, circa 19??, on his Fledgling (spelling?)

Yesterday was the toughest day yet for the competition, the weather was overcalled and only two C pilots were able to make goal out of all the pilots. My team pushed and launched at 3pm while no one had yet to launch with the strategy to spread out in hopes of finding some lift. The sail plane that had just past by was not encouraging as it sunk away, but it was already 3pm and we thought if we sunk out and it got good we could always relight.

I launched first and radioed back to my team to not follow me, for Eric it was too late, but our C pilot was able to take my advice and he tried something different and was able to find a climb and he was one of the two that made goal!

Last night Mike Barber went over some landing footage taken this week and talked about landing, which he said 9/10 times if someone is having a problem its because they are pushing out and not up on their flare. I've tried to include a video but I think this connection is too slow to do it. But I will make a video for youtube once I have the time after the meet is over. Today is the last day and the scores are getting pretty close. If our C hadn't made goal we would be a few points from second place. The E team dropped off, only scoring 46 points yesterday compared to the 240 points the top three teams scored yesterday. So now Team Ohio has moved up to second place and are only 160 points behind us (making goal is worth 100). Team Scores:

1 - 2,149 - Thermal Underwear

2 - 1,980 - Team Ohio

3 - 1,706 - E Team

4 - 1,461 - Pale Gliders

5 - 1,433 - B'Low Me Again

6 - 1,419 - Comp Concepts

7 - 1,419 - Team Colorado

8 - 1,011 - Leftovers

9 - 980 - Mountaineers

10 - 871 - Air Hogs

Today is going to be an out and back type of task. The C's are just out, to the same goal as yesterday, the B's are out and back here to Henson's, and the A's have to go out and back to the C goal twice. The weather is called fairly similar to yesterday, but hopefully it is more accurate today. There may be some nice cumies today whereas yesterday was called for none. 

Day 5 - A Blue Day

Jim Lamb imparting some of his knowledge on lesser experienced pilots.
Jeff Bozarth laumching.

Today was a later day, as usual for this NW facing site. My team was able to launch around 3 after about 20 other gliders. The day was called to be a good, albeit blue, day with the inversion rising to 6,500'-7,000', which is good for this site and 500 avg fpm climbs. Early on it didn't seem to be that way. I was able to launch in a strong cycle and get up fairly quickly. Terry Presley substituted for Eric on our team who had to go work in Nashville, and hadn't slept in 36 hours so may or may not be back tomorrow to fly for our team. But Terry was able to get in front of the other teams before they mover over in front of the rest of our team, where we were second to last in line.

So I was able to get up and meet Terry who had been boating around waiting for us to launch. Our C pilot was able to get up and Terry worked down just to work with him and help him climb back up. It was an excellent example of what this meet was about, if you could hear what was going on the radio - nothing beats having a former World team member core down to help you climb out and talk you through it on the radio! I know our C appreciated it, and made it to their goal! Terry was then able to scratch low from helping our C pilot, Bill from FL, and continued on to the A goal and back to land at the C goal (which was the lz of the A task as well). I stayed back with one of our B pilots who was struggling and tried to help him as best I could and spiraled down from 6,500' to about 3,000' to try and help him out. It was a bit more challenging to help someone - I have a lot of respect for the clinics Mike Barber has done for people for so long when he flies with them and tries to coach them. It is much tougher than it sounds, and probably more frustrating too.

Needless to say the B pilot I was trying to help sunk out, and I had spiraled down several times to help him but to no avail. By the time he was landing out, I was also struggling so I floated on down to the C goal where a keg was eventually brought to the delight of all. The selfish part of myself (usually too much of myself) was frustrated that I had spent my time trying to help someone when I could have made my goal. But the altruistic-self reminded me that is what this meet is about, besides, Terry was able to help a pilot and make his goal!

One of the scariest things I saw was a mid-air collision. I have talked with both pilots and neither of them knew they hit each other and maybe no one would have never known. I was less than a hundred feet over them and barely caught the incident. Luckily they both were turning right which was what was called by the task comittee. I was busy making sure I was hitting anyone when I looked down just at the right time to see the lower pilots wing left wing tip tap the right wing tip of the barely higher pilot and they just 'boinked' and kind of bounced off each other. It was barely a touch but it was there. I know there were some other close calls too, but overall another safe day. Tipp Rogers had one of the best launches of the day despite him having one leg and he was off after two hops off the ramp, it was amazing to watch.

At the end of the day, it sounds like only maybe two or three A pilots made their goal, possibly no B pilots and several C pilots made it. Tomorrow I will post the new scores.

There is also the topic of a new scoring system that was brought up this morning because there is the concern that the C pilots are not being scored as heavily as they should be since this is what the meet concentrates on - helping C pilots learn how to go xc and so they should get the most points, which would reflect the most involvement and teaching from the A pilots on their team. So the scores may change so that the C's are more heavily weighted, which makes sense to me. There is also the discussion to have a different format or teams for those who want to go to bigger comps after this one. Which I would have enjoyed last year to prepare me for East Coast and Big Spring. That should be a big draw for those intermediate pilots next year who are looking to attend those bigger meets.

Day 4 - Blown Out and New Scores

Last night was a great karaoke dinner with several people embarrassing themselves pretty well. Ollie had several songs and the Air Hogs had a good one too. Yesterday's task was a fun time for everyone with many people making goal. The Henson LZ (B and C goal) was packed at the end of the day. Early on (2:30) it was a bit scracthy but the ridge was beginning to work. By the end of the day when I was landing, and many others, it was a struggle to come down, there was lift everywhere. Cloudbase was at 6,500' and I got there once. The E team caught up to use even more in the scores (see below) despite 3 of our team members taking sled runs early to get the extra points. Ollie, and his mothership, was able to escort all his C's to their goal down the ridge. All day the ridge looked like Atlanta rush hour traffic since all the tasks crossed the same area at least once and at most 4 times! Everyone was flying with everyone else, it was good fun.

We also just completed a launching clinic with Dennis Pagen and watching every single competitors launch on video. It was great because most everyone did not know the subtleties of their launch techniques. The grapevine grip was the most purported method. Later we'll have a landing clinic with all the footage that has been taken so far. Jim Lamb (A-I-R USA) is giving a talk right now on technical soaring, talking about polars, and other complicated things.

Today has been called, but some are free flying for fun. Tomorrow looks like a great day, and my team better step it up if we don't want to loose first place, but if the E Team keeps doing what they've done, we'll be in second after tomorrow.

Team Scores as of 10/1/08

1 - 807 - Thermal Underwear

2 - 798 - E Team

3 - 624 - Team Ohio

4 - 601 - Mountaineers

5 - 541 - Team Colorado

6 - 523 - Comp Concepts

7 - 519 - The Pale Gliders

8 - 465 - B'Low Me Again

9 - 400 - Air Hogs

10 - 345 - The Leftovers

Day 3 - Team Scores and Today's Task

Keith Atkins photo of several people climbing in front of launch.

Here are the current standings and team names and members. There may be some errors since teams with 6 only lcan count five per day so I may have missed a pilot or two. E-team had a great day yesterday with Stan Roberts one of the few A pilots making goal and he assisted one of his other pilots to give him a multiplier on his score so they've jumped up in the standings from 4th to 2nd from the first day to the second. From here on out I'll just list the team' scores, but use this as a reference to see who is on what team. Today is suppossed to be ridge soarable and with not many C pilots having made goal they have decided a goal for them just down the ridge to hopefully get more people to taste the sweetness of making goal. B's and A's are also staying close to the ridge because the karaoke dinner is tonight that we don't want to have long retrieves to miss it. Last night Mike Barber gave an excellent talk on soaring - his keyword in flying is 'now' and the 'race is in the climb and the race is in the line.'

1 - Thermal Underwear - 428.25

~Keith Smith - B

~Bill Baker - C

~Bob Belshan - B

~Lucas Ridley - A

~Eric Donaldson - A

2 - E Team - 376.35

~Terry Presley - A+

~Stan Roberts - A

~James Donovan - C

~Dave Hopkins - A+

~Lindsey Chew - B

~Gavin Riley - C (injured and out now - he hit a tree the first day, but he is okay and I think his glider took most of the damage. The way he described it is that he just didn't see this tree because it had no branches or leaves, but I don't know all the details)

3 - Team Ohio - 296.9

~Jim Lamb - A+

~Mark Thogmartin - C

~Craig Hassen - B

~Terry Mull - C

~Christopher Thale - C

4 - B'Low Me Again - 265.3

~Edward Jowett - C

~Dennis Pagen - A+

~Stephen Krichten - A

~Donald Campasino - C

~Jesse Fulkersin - B

5 - Comp Concepts - 253.4

~Peter Kane - B

~Kevin Carter - A+

~William Estes - C

~Bryon Estes - B

~Jeff Nibler - B

6 - Arkansas Air Hogs - 232.7

~Mark Stump - A+

~Barron Mekinley - A

~Walter Jordon - B

~Butch Pritchett - B

~Steve Prater - C

7 - The Pale Gliders - 220.4

~Oliver Gregory - A+

~Ricker Goldsborough - C

~Collin Hodsdon - C

~Larry Snyder - A+

~Jake Mitchell - C

~Jeff Bozarth - C

8 - Mountaineers - 220

~Patrick Brooks - A

~Will Jenkins - A

~Pat Halfill - A

~John Mcallister - A

~Jim Rowan - A

9 - Team Colorado - 197.2

~Jeff Laughrey - A

~John Wilber - B

~Fred Kaemerer - B

~Shawn Banks - B

~Rick Maddy - C

10 - The Leftovers - 130.5

~Bruce Engen - A+

~Jonathan Small - C

~Roger Tubbs - C

~Kinsley Sykes - B

~Kevin Sheridan - C

Team Challenge - Day 1 and 2

Ollie Gregory on launch today.

The Team Challenge has started off great!
10 Teams have converged at the Tree Toppers site at Henson's Gap for a fantastic meet! There are teams from Ohio, Arkansas, Colorado, New York, and pilots from all over: Louisiana, Florida, Virginia, Maryland and many locals helping out. There are awesome volunteers helping even before the event started getting Henson's looking great and tonight for example, the Lee's are cooking an excellent dinner of corn and chicken. Other's help by either being 'wind technicians,' wire crew, drivers, the pro lecturers (Dennis Pagen, Mark Stump, Kevin Carter, Mike Barber), cooks, videographers (Keith Atkins), and much more. This meet has gone off well and everyone is enthusiastic to learn and fly together safely.
Yesterday was a tough day with only a handful of pilots making goal. Dennis Pagen's talk later that night about scratching had a lot of application for earlier that day.
Today was even tougher with even fewer pilots making goal. I can only speak to what I've heard about so far but our team has managed to do well and are in first as the "Thermal Underwear," with the Arkansas "Air Hogs" about 80 points behind us (we have about 240 points from yesterday). Behing the Air Hogs it is a close race with many people not being able to go xc.
Today's and yesterday's task were the same, except today the A pilots were a bit further. The C pilots goal was about 8 miles down the ridge, the B pilots 13 miles, and the A's 17 yesterday and 25 miles today.
It was fantastic to be able to fly with a team and use our radios to aid each other. For example, Eric Donaldson on our team helped our C pilot, Bill from Florida, make it to his goal by flying to him and guiding him there with me and one of our B pilots all in sight of each other. It's time to eat so I need to go get some before it's gone. I am already looking forward to next year!

Tomorrow a front may be coming through so we'll see what happens . . .

New youtube group

I just created a hang gliding youtube group and you can join by going to:
www.youtube.com/group/hangliding

Help!

Okay, I need some help. I have been in this Full Throttle Contest for a little while and I was on top, the only video with 5 stars until some nerds ganged up on me to vote about 30,000 times one star for my video. I know only have two stars. I am just trying to get at least one of those back.

You can go to: https://cocacola.eprize.net/gofullthrottle/index.tbapp?page=gallery
and vote as many times as you want, you just have to click Search and it will refresh the page and you can vote again. I'm not asking to vote anyone else's down - just mine 5 stars. I'm on the second page now. Thanks

What I do

If you're curious what I do for work, this is an example of what I've been working on:

http://atlas.utc.edu/crm

Another Video Contest

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqxbaHE2Ntw

This is the link to my video in the Post-It Note youtube contest. We'll see if I'm in the finals in a week or so . . .

It will help me if you rate the video high (with the stars below the video) - makes the video look good :)