Prez Sez

Hello again.

It's getting to the time of year again where we need to start planning for the Pulpit fly-in on September 15th and 16th. (Editor's note - rescheduled date: October 6-7.) If you haven't already, you should contact Carlos Weill to volunteer to help out. With any luck, we will have another banner year with two soarable/XC days.

We have also experienced a rash of poor launches. I just want to remind everyone that each of us needs to perform a real self-assessment on our flying to ensure that we are flying safely. This may mean re-focusing on particular aspects of our flights (i.e., launching and landing). So far we have avoided serious injuries and let's keep it that way.

Speaking of self assessments, I thought that I would pass my experiences on from renting a glider from Windsports Soaring Center [818/ 988-0111] and flying Kegler Mountain [sp?] in LA a few weeks ago. Overall, I had a good experience and would recommend that anyone flying to LA should consider renting a glider from Windsports. The gliders are stored across the street from the LZ, so essentially you just show up, grab a glider, and tie it on a truck headed for the top. It couldn't be easier.

However, I would do a few things differently. I decided that I would rent an easy handling glider so that the flight would be less stressful. Windsports said that they had a Pulse in my size available and I figured, why not? I wasn't going XC and just wanted fun flight. Even though I had never flown a Pulse, it couldn't be too hard to fly. The glider was straight forward to set up, and I found the hang strap length to be just right. I did change the hang point to move it back a little to what looked like the normal range. After getting Hungary Joe from Windsports to double check my set up, I launched around 1:30 under a sunny sky.

As I ran down the steep ramp, I had a distracting thought: here I was launching an unfamiliar glider, having never flown this model of glider, wasn't sure that it was trimmed correctly, at a new site, that is notoriously rowdy, and I was launching in the middle of the day. I was surprised I made it off the ramp. Actually, everything worked out fine. The glider was trimmed perfectly, I hung at the perfect level, and I felt comfortable enough to start thermalling immediately. Nevertheless, all I wanted was a easy fun flight, not that big of an adrenaline rush. Next time I will try harder to rent a glider that I had flown before and maybe launch a little later in the day. This site was pretty rowdy, and after 2 hours I had to land because I was tired having to man-handle the glider so much. But over all, I would still recommend flying in LA, just with a few minor modifications. Anyway, I hope that some of you may benefit from my experience.

See you in the air.
Tom McGowan