Weekend report April 27 - 28

The season got off to a roaring start this weekend.  (Actually, last season never ended; our club members flew during every month since last April. This must be some kind of record!)

We had two excellent weather days, with a few clouds on Saturday and even fewer on Sunday. Light south winds and good lift to 7000 feet, with some climbs to 9000. Just as an indication of how good the weather was, on both days Skip came home after several hours of flying and found a 10-knot climb to 7000 feet right over the end of the runway.

On Saturday Paul (S1), Skip (JS), Tom (TH), Dan (3J), Greg (JD), and Moshe (RU) flew cross-country flights or "extended local" flights, but only four of them were recorded.

The rest of us did annual field checks and ground school, the latter performed while we were waiting for Sam to come back with the 2-33.  We also had time to swap stories and learn something about the life of an air traffic controller from our newest member, Toby Bucsescu.

Our cookout Saturday night was well attended, and as is usual this time of year, we ran out of food, but not beer.

Sunday was a banner day. We were fairly efficient, having learned from all the operational mistakes we made the day before. We wore out four towpilots. The golf cart died a couple of times, but we dealt with it. The hotshots flew a total of eleven hundred miles, including Evan's record setting flight of 575 km, and Tim's 137 km flight which began at 5pm.

For the weekend: 19 glider pilots, 4 towpilots, 35 flights.

Record keeping

We haven't caught up with all the documentation of our outstanding flying day on Sunday, but we have a good excuse.

Evan declared a 532 km triangle and completed it at 66.8 mph. This outstanding flight blew away the previous Vermont state speed record of 62 mph and earned him 13 other state records for speed and distance. Without waterballast. Congratulations to Evan on his planning and execution!  We expect him to write his story any day now.

The Vermont record keeper was busy yesterday.  With luck, the weekend report will appear later today.

When you lose your draft

What do you do when you lose your draft?

Pull over, according to Sgt. McGonigle:

Claudio Abreu, 68, of Nutley made an emergency landing in his single-passenger glider last Thursday.

He took off from Blairstown before making an unexpected afternoon landing in Northhampton County, Pa., Lehigh Police Sgt. Michael McGonigle told the Sun.

"When [Abreu] got up to Pennsylvania, the cold front came in and he lost his draft," McGonigle said. "He pushed past the situation in a large corn field and pulled over."

It beats bailing out, I guess.

Assembly

A hardy band of glider pilots assembled at Post Mills today.

Braving raw conditions, they moved all the pieces of the 2-33 and the 1-23 to the north end of the runway and spent a few hours washing, talking, and rigging.  By 2pm, Dennis, John, Mark, Mike, Paul, Rick, Sonya, Skip, Steve, Tom, and our new friend and potential member Dakai Zhu were tying down the gliders.

Post Mills looks like an airport again.  Happy Spring!

Name that club member

In the blue shirt.

Another First

Congratulations to Mark Hopkins on his first solo yesterday!  Mark went south a few weeks ago and joined the accelerated training program with our friends at BHSS.  He also cleverly avoided mud season and Assembly Day.

Juliet Delta takes to the skies

Updated: more info on the PMSC website

After thinking about it for five months, Greg finally got his chance to go flying in his new sailplane.  He and Tim went down to Springfield on Saturday and were able to enjoy the first really good cross-country day of the year.  It's possible that Evan was there too, but unlike JD and PM, there is no trace of T8 on the OLC website.