New Addition to the Family

On Friday I took home Tucker, a 10 week old male Chocolate Lab. Nala, the cat, wasn't too happy with this, but as of Sunday night she's finally able to chill out in the same room as him.



His dad, Dodger, is 86 pounds and by the size of his paws I think he's going to be pretty big himself.

Getting There is the Best Part

Ashley and I took a trip to Arrowhead and then on to Big Bear this past weekend. We hung around for Oktoberfest and enjoyed some really good food, but the highlight was the great views on the mountain drive.



This picture was taken on our way down the mountain. Shortly after we continued the drive, visibility was pretty low till we got through the bottom of the clouds.

Great HG Video

This is one of my favorite Hang Gliding videos i've come across on the net. It was posted over at http://hanggliding.org a while back and through the disucssion we figured out the music is from 'The Island' soundtrack and the piece is named 'My Name is Lincoln'.

Elsinore E-Launch

I drove up to the E Launch before I went to Skylark to fly a sailplane. I've been talking to the local pilots to learn a bit more about flying the area. It will probably be another month or 2 before I launch here. Something to definitely look forward to.



Mickey just after launch.


Mike launching

Facon 3 195 - First Flight

It has arrived! Today I went to AJ Park to fly the Falcon for the first time. Rob took it for a test flight and planned to top land and hand it over to me.

Setup was a lot like the 225 I've been renting except for the way the battons hook in and the Falcon 3 has a nose cone.

Shortly after it was setup, Rob was off. It's a great site to see the glider flying for the first time. It has a red leading edge, a thing black stripe on the bottom, and the rest is white.

It looked like Rob was on a sled ride to the bottom and I had started setting up the back-up glider in case that was going to happen. Before I had extended the wings someone points out a glider in the distance a little bit higher than the launch.

At first I thought it was going to be difficult to tell for a while if it was Rob, but there is no mistaking the dark black stripe against the sky in the distance. He got about 500 over and then came in for a top landing.

I was pretty excited at the turn of events. I put on the harness and was ready to go. He warned that it was pretty tuned and if anything, it may have a very slight left turn tendancy. He said to fly it a few times to let the sail settle before we make any adjustments.

I clumsily walked the glider down to launch. It feels a lot lighter than the 225 which was great but I still need more experience with the ground handling.

I launched off Marshal at about 4:15 into a 5KT headwind. I noticed the sensitivity of the controls in comparison to the 225 immediatly.

Unlike the 225, every little movement in the harness moved the glider around. I do like this but I wasn't used to this type of response. Entering turns seemed a little sloppy too. Suddenly the position of my feet and speed play a lot more into flying a coordinated turn.

Once I was in a turn, I would either stall a bit by flying to slow, or get in a much faster and tighter turn than I had been used to before. There were times where I did fly a coordinated turn and learned what it should feel like but I still need a lot more work.

At one point I was at about 2900 feet and about 1/2 mile east of the field when a red helicopter came speeding in my direction less than a thousand feet below me. I turned around immediately because I wanted no part of his blade wash. He made a quick turn and was out of there as fast as he came.

I headed back for the LZ to land. This time I flew a great pattern but I blew it at the last minute. I was heading toward the PG spot because of the wind direction and moved off it when I thought about the people watching. After the fact I knew I should have kept my heading into the wind because it really didn't matter if I landed on the PG spot if no PGs were coming in. The landing was better than last time but still a bit sloppy. I'm looking forward to when i can land a hang glider like I can land an airplane.

All in all I'm pretty happy with my purchase. The difference between the 225 and 195 was a LOT more than I ever anticipated. I asked Rob a couple times if I would grow out of this quick and if I should consider a sport glider but he insisted that the Falcon 3 would be the best for me to develop my skills with. Flying the new wing re-enforced why I took the advice of an expert over my own gut feelings that I would be immediately ready for a higher performance glider.

After I packed everything up, I put it on my new rack and had Diane come over and make sure everything looked OK. It was nice to finally see a glider on the new (to me) cherokee I got just for this. Everything is coming together and all that's left is the harness before I'm completely independant to fly with my own gear.