Here is a picture of the two of them taking a break to pray toward Mecca.
Meanwhile, we were able to accomplish some instructional flights under the low ceiling, with Andy towing. A passing rain shower shut down the operation for a bit, but we resumed and were able to finish Moshe's flight review and Dennis's Blanik checkout. Late in the day, the sky opened up and Dennis was able to stay up for a while, on the only soaring flight of the day.
Sunday started off great. Evan (T8), Greg (JD), Tom (2W), Dan (EA), Tim (PM) took off early. Evan headed north to Stowe where he spent an hour communing with the trees when high cirrus clouds moved in (a good lesson in not giving up). He still managed to put in 499 km by the end of the day. The Flock (JD, 2W, EA, PM) made a quick trip to Killington via a cloud street with bases to 7K'. At Killington Tim turned around to give Doug (PM) a chance with PM and the rest of the Flock continued south of Jamaica (that's VT) while avoiding the worst of the high clouds. Their round trip was about 240 km. Moshe (RU) put in a nice flight "tip-toeing around areas shaded by thick cirrus" and visited Peacham and Williamstown. Nice local flights were had by Henry in 3J, Dakai and Andy Lawrence in BA, Ben and Tim in BA, Andy Lawrence (PM), and Skip (JS). Thanks for towing Doug!
Also on Sunday, Rick and Dennis visited NESA at Springfield where we hung out with Phil Stoddard, Alasdair Crawford, Lee Blair, Larry Perry, and Walter Striedieck, all of whom had opinions about how to fly a Ventus B. After waiting for the advice and the wind to die down, Dennis hopped into his glider, gave the thumbs up, and took off.
After twenty minutes of flying around with his gear down (intentionally), he made a smooth touchdown on runway 23 and rolled to a stop. His towpilot and instructor had the pleasure of being the first to congratulate our newest high-performance sailplane pilot!
4 comments:
Congrats, Dennis! You're going to have a lot of fun with that ship!
Good Job Dennis and Rick, both have worked hard to make the Ventus fly.
Sunday was four soaring days rolled into one: A pretty if not particularly high day early, a cirrus covered day for guest rides, instruction and desperate rock polishing, a "normal" June soaring day and finally the record day I thought we were going to get.
T8
Yep, a lot depended on where you were. We spent most of the day under a small patch of cirrus while the Cu just 10 miles west looked solid all day long.
GBSC had one outlanding at Springfield and two at Claremont.
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