Pulpit Fly-in 2001

by Ellis Kim


Well, Carlos Weill did a superb job leading the club's effort to put on a good show. There was food, beer, great prizes, fireworks and a (camp)fire. What we neglected to do was to sacrifice a virgin boy to the windgodess. Gotta put it on the list for next year.

In a word, it was blown out on Saturday. So, big deal, we started the party early. Yeah, bring on the beer! And the hamburgers and the potato salad and the various yummy noodle salads. True to the axiom "the more beer consumed, the better the conditions", it became reasonablish while there was still daylight. Mitch Shipley and Matthew Graham who had been optimistically set up and had not yet started consuming alcohol, launched from the left ramp, sending a number of us scrambling to set up our gliders. Alas, it was too late in the day and Mitch and Matthew had the ridge to themselves. Matthew reported still honking conditions. Mitch zoomed down the ridge for 7.8 miles. They almost didn't get picked up, due to the rest of the pilots going back to partying.

Sunday was blown out and most of the pilots had bailed to Woodstock even before 10:00 - the official pilot briefing time. Apparently it was blowing pretty strong there, also, but many flew.

Monday, it was friggin cross and sometimes blowing over the back. Tom McGowan and Mark Cavanaugh launched and did some heart stopping rotor surfing, succumbing to gravity shortly. Fortunately into the LZ. Matthew and Karen reported east in the valley and that was that. The rest of us bailed, too. Sheila Gardner showed up in the early evening and was scratching her head: straight in, perfect conditions, but not a single pilot around?

Major kudos go not only to Carlos who cheerfully led the organization effort, but also to Mark Cavanaugh who managed to get a lot of great prizes for the raffle ($200 glider discount, tandem and solo tows, kestrel windspeed indicators, just to name a very few) and to John Dullahan, who showed up despite his broken foot (running not flying) and helped out with everything from registration, to taking pix to driving LZ shuttle and manning the spot landing contest.

And thanks to our sponsors, to everybody who helped out and of course to all the pilots who showed up to support the McConnellsburg rescue squad.

Well, we all did have a good time anyway.

Pulpit Fly-In continued:
But, wait, that's not all!

by Ellis Kim

Mitch Shipley suggests: Since we didn't get many valid comp flights in last weekend and all our trophies all say 2001, we need to do some sort of modified comp for this year. What I propose is that we extend the end date of the fly-in competition through Sunday December 9th. Anyone who registered and paid at the fly-in can compete. The rules are the same as the comp package with the following modifications. You can fly from any site in region nine. If you do anything but straight line from launch to landing, you have to provide a GPS track file to be scored. Your two best flights count. We'll cancel the team part of the comp for this year. The spot landing comp will have to be cancelled as well. We can do the duration award for the longest single flight, just e-mail your flight duration with all the other stuff. Remember all the handicaps and mileage calculations still apply. E-mail me when you crack off those good flights.     Mitch

This suggestion was made official by flight director, Carlos Weill who added the following:
There are 27 pilots that signed-up for the competition. I know it will be difficult to satisfy everyone. This was the second time that we had scheduled it (editor's note: the Pulpit fly-in was postponed due to events on September 11). Many don't have all weekends open. Even with almost no flying everyone who participated has been supportive and understanding. Many have volunteered their time, effort and own money. We achieved our main goal to collect for fire and rescue.

If anyone would like to be refunded for comp or spot landing e-mail me directly (cweill@excite.com), otherwise that money will go directly to the donation.

Note as of time of publication: Pete Lehmann is in the lead right now with 86 mile flight and about 2:30 on Sunday out of Templeton.