Session #11

July 17, 2015

Site – Cape Kiwanda, Oregon coastal training hill approximately 150ft high.

Conditions – maybe 5 on the beach and 12-15 on top NNW, clear and warm
Cummulative flights to date: 18

Number of flights - 1

This glider is the culmination of the re-build on my own glider I built and crashed back in the early 80's.

Spent all day up until 11PM getting the final things done on the ER for it's maiden flight tomorrow AM. Left town around 7:30. Nice, sunny day with a slight drift from the south as I arrived. Began setting up and within an hour the north drift set in. By the time I was set up it was about 5mph from the NNW. Had to make several trips to the bottom of the hill. Still picking up but about perfect. I would guess about 10mph at the first false summit on the dune. I was so burned out from the week working long, hot hours getting the glider done I ran out of energy and decided to fly from the false summit rather than try and continue to the top. The extra weight didn't help.....16lbs more than the 50lb plan estimate. Ran a bit further than I planned but got off with no problems. I made very small directional corrections but mainly concentrated on airspeed....especially as I came in to land. The flight lasted only seconds but the glider felt just like Darrel's in the air and I am now confident taking it off of an inland trainer hill.....if I can only find one! Decided to pack up and head home. All in all the new glider got off very nicely relative to keeping the sand off of it. I'll wipe it down when I get home but it won't need much. Need to tighten the tip cables and replace all of the 1/16 cable with vinyl coated. I noticed that Darrel's had the 3/32 cable on the root negative wires. I may do that at some point. What an epic event! Finally, after all the struggling and hard work I finished it. I am now needing to apply the center closure and fabricate fairings, oh, and rig a chute mount plus set up the seat harness Darrel gave me. I'll do all this on his glider and use it for my transition to higher, inland launches. I did mount the GoPro and filmed this flight but I had to mount it close enough to turn it on without setting the glider down so the footage was worthless....way to close and the angle was terrible. I don't need a driver, I need a camera person.