No flying today

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Credit: NASA.

Timing is everything

Tim had an adventurous flight yesterday. He dashed up to Twin Mountain where he got low. He ridge soared back to Franconia where he got high. Then he took a cloudstreet over to Cabot where he got low again. Two hours later he was higher, but not high enough to make the crossing from the central Vermont plateau back to Post Mills. During his struggle, he talked with Moshe, who was nearing the end of his 87 km flight out of Morrisville.

Timing is everything. The day ended half an hour earlier than Tim was hoping, and he called it quits at Montpelier after a 205 km flight. He rolled up to the same spot on Runway 35 that he had visited five days earlier.

This time his crew was ready (and motivated by the prospect of a dinner on the town). Just over an hour after landing out, the 304 was back in the trailer at Post Mills, and the Slackers were off to get pizza.

We beat the crowd at Stella's by a slim margin. Timing is everything.

Montpelier Flytrap

Montpelier airport is very attractive, like the carnivorous plant in Little Shop of Horrors.

The role of the victim was played today by Tim.

Places to land

Also from Andy:

A project of mine is to map landable fields and little known airports on Google Maps so everyone can peruse them from the comfort of their favorite web surfing chair.

Check out PMSC Landpoints.

If you'd like to add ones you know about, log in with the same info as XCSkies (ask Andy how to do this -Ed.), hit the Edit button and enter a waypoint or address in the searchbar. Drop a marker, name it, and enter the appropriate comments.

I have Rick's landpoint database and will continue to add from that list, but again please feel free to help out.

Also there's a Google Earth plug-in for your browser. If you need it, click on the map icon in the upper right. You should see the Google Earth icon. Click that and you'll get a prompt to install the plug-in.

Weekend report August 13 - 14

From Andy:

Saturday turned out to be a very busy day and despite the overcast some flights managed to stay up for a while.

Andy Lawrence finally decided it was time to get back in the air so he got a check ride with Tim and then flew the 1-23 at least once, maybe twice. Alexander is back in the area for a few weeks and his last flight in the 1-23 was for one hour. Nice job Alexander!

Tim gave a ride to a friend from California and I gave 4 introductory rides to a family from Hartland VT and one of them is seriously interested in joining.

Thanks to Sonny for saving the day by making yet another gas run and no, there were no other volunteers for this job which is a serious problem for which we need a solution!

Sunday was a no-fly day.

Things you can watch on the internet today

1. Open Class Nationals at Uvalde, Texas

Reports from John Good
Reports from Frank Paynter and Bill Elliott

2. Junior World Gliding Championships in Germany

Official website
US Team blog

3. European Gliding Championships in Lithuania

Official website, with link to tracking
Unofficial website, with better reporting

4. Two crazy guys flying around the world in a Rotax-powered two-seat airplane

Website
Twitter

Gold rush

After reading his story of almost making it, we knew it wouldn't be long before we would hear of Tony's successful 300 km Gold Distance flight on August 3rd.


Details are sketchy, but we know that he took a long tow from Minden (possibly to avoid an early outlanding), and that the flight lasted only 3 hours and 45 minutes. At that speed (92 kph), he could easily achieve his next milestone, 500 km. That would be a rush.

Congratulations Tony! Send us the story.

Weekend report July 30 - 31

After a slow day Saturday (one flight in 3J by Bill), Sunday turned into a good day for cross-country flying.

Paul (S1) and Tim (PM) flew to Mount Washington and back while Sonny (LT) was taking a 175 km tour of central Vermont. Constrained by time, Skip (JS) and Andy (PM) made extended local flights.