Thursday, May 28, 2015

Session #10

May 28, 2015
Site – Cape Kiwanda, Oregon coastal training hill approximately 150ft high.
Conditions – maybe 5 on the beach and 12-15 on top WNW. Heavy overcast with offshore fog.
Cummulative flights to date: 12
Number of flights - 6

This is the first trip with the Easy since my last flight session last fall.
All flights from the top.

First flight dealing with more west than north so had to think about a right turn on takeoff, cruise down the ridge, left turn as I approached the bottom No Vehicles signs and then “oh, crap, the gradient”. Found my self stalled in the left turn and augered in from about 15 ft. Nothing hurt, just a lot of sand all over the glider. A bystander caught the entire flight on his iPhone.
Unfortunately, the resolution was set very low and you can barely see what happened.
  The next 2 flights I concentrated on that gradient and did fine. The last 3 flights I tucked my legs up to get a feel for bringing my feet up into the cage. On #5 I actually got my right foot onto the leading edge and could have pulled up my left but felt I had too many things going on. Still getting used to maintaining airspeed while holding my flight path and dealing with that gradient. The last flight I easily landed 5-10 yds past my tarp and also worked on slowing the glider so I wasn't having to run it on so hard. On 4 & 5 I noticed I was having to run a bit too fast on touchdown....seems to be very little ground effect glide with the Easy....or maybe just me?  I'm feeling like this was the last beach session.  150 ft elevation is not high enough to do much more than launch and land.  Finding an intermediate hill is going to be a challenge.  About 400-500ft would be ideal.  Unfortunately there is nothing local.  I also need to think about rigging the LARA chute I bought last year for the Easy before tackling a higher launch.  Since I'm doing this all solo, it is not possible to get any video from the ground.  I have decided not to mess with the GoPro glider mounted since an on-board perspective not very useful (read: I'm just too lazy to set it up?).