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When I got to the field this morning, the sun had just broken over the horizon. It was a little foggy, and I knew the view was going to be spectacular. I got set up and ready to go… the ground was wet so my wing was soaked, and there was almost no wind. This was going to be tough!
I had a picture perfect launch. No sweat! That felt great. I got up a couple hundred feet and OH MY, look at that view! The fog just looked awesome. I pulled out my camera and turned it on to start shooting pics… I looked at the LCD screen on the camera and it said “No CF Card”. SHIT! I had taken the memory card out of the camera to download the last batch of photos to my computer and I never put the card back in the camera… unfortunately it wasn’t in my flying camera bag, either. What to do? At first, I told myself “screw it”… I was just going to fly on and forget about pictures. Then I started thinking about the weight of the camera around my neck and how silly it was to be flying around with it and not be taking photos. But crap that field is so wet, and there wasn’t much wind…. UGH! I was lucky enough to get up the first time… But that view of the fog was just too much to bear. I had to land and get that card!
I had a nice landing, unhooked, and grabbed the card from the car. Unfortunately, I didn’t bring the wing down well enough to take off again without resetting it first. So I set the wing back up and got strapped back in. I stood up and pulled and the motor starter cord and nothing happened. CRAP! I had let it cool down too much I guess. I pulled and pulled and I couldn’t get it started. So I took off the motor to start it from the ground. It started, then it blew my wing and messed up my perfect layout. Oh well… I’m going to try it anyway. Bad idea. When there’s not much wind and your wing is wet, you really need to have it laid out properly! Blew that launch attempt… time to re-set and do it right.
I finally got off the ground again at 9:10. I climbed up to see the fog and I saw an unfamiliar PPC. I wonder who this guy is?

He went straight under me and didn’t seem like he wanted to hang around, so I went on and did my own thing. There was a strange thing going on with the wind today. The wind had picked up a bit down low, so I decided to just go into the wind for a while. It’s always safest to travel into the wind, because if it picks up to the point where you can’t penetrate it, then you can turn around and fly downwind back to your LZ. It was getting a bit bumpy down low anyway so I climbed on up to see what he wind was like up high. It got really rough in the inversion layer, then it got smooth… but this was the strange part… When I got up there past the inversion layer, I suddenly started moving FASTER instead of slower. Hmm… I experimented a bit and sure enough, the wind up high was about 180 degrees off from what it was down low. When I turned back toward my LZ when I was up high, I was hardly moving. Odd. I knew this difference in wind direction would make for some funky air, so I decided not to stray too far from home. Time to go back down low and get closer to the field. It was bumpy going back through the inversion layer, but not too bad once I was down low again.
I saw these geese making a mass exodus from a pond near the LZ:

I flew back over to the big field and found that the PPC I had seen earlier had landed there. He was REALLY far away from his truck, which I thought was odd. I did some low passes and said “hi”.
I shot this hawk with my Canon.

I finally landed around 10:15 or so. I packed up and headed over to talk to the PPC guy. I walked all the way across that big field to him and his buddy as they were packing up their gear. This was the first time the guy had ever flown! He had just bought the PPC and flew it, without ever having gotten any training! That takes way more balls than sense!

I talked to those guys for a while and then headed home for some lunch.

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