BlogPPG

I drove out to Arkoma… that would be a small city on the border of, wait for it…. Oklahoma and Arkansas. This was my first mid-day flight. I was assured by a VERY competent pilot that the thermals were present but safe to fly. He was right on both accounts. I had an OK launch but almost immediately caught sink. It kept me level under full power. Once it released i was off like a rocket. The pockets of lift were very interesting to fly in. I half enjoyed it but was a bit fearful as well. I had minor tip collapses, nothing to fear but just beyond my bump tolerance. I lapped the field a few time and landed with out incident. A great flight for experience but not all that enjoyable.

The part of the day I really did enjoy was watching Britton Shaw taking his student for a foot launch tandem flight. Britton is one hell of an instructor and pilot. He had his student kiting like a pro in half a day in low wind conditions. He was extremely knowledgeable and patient. If the rest of the training mirrored what i saw, i would recommend Britton as an instructor if you are looking for one in the Oklahoma/Arkansas area. You can find him at RVPPG.com

Here are some photos of their tandem flight on his huge sod training field.

.

The weather finally calmed down and I was able to fly in Stigler, OK. The big difference between flying here vs at home; once i got to 200 agl, I could see MILES! it is sooo flat here. suprisingly not many places to land. There are a lot of trees and fields with bulls in them.

A photo of me flying over my in-laws house. Notice all the chairs in the driveway?

Those chairs were there because the whole town came out to watch me fly There isn’t a lot to do in Stigler…

.

MZ100 + my fat ass + 4500′ = No flying

Here are some photos of my failed attempt in Sedona.

As you can see, I didn’t have any trouble with bringing the wing up, the motor just didn’t have enough umph to get me off  in area I had to launch. Maybe if there had been a little wind.

This is what I didn’t get to order from the air…

.

Saturday 11/3/07

Even though it was really, really cold this morning, I was determined to fly. I called up Matt and asked him if he wanted to try out flying in Martinsville since he’d never been there before. He was in. We met up in Greenwood and he followed me down there. We had a late start, but that was O.K. since it was so cold. Every bit we waiting it would just be that much warmer. There was a big advertisement sign in Martinsville that had the temperature on it - 36 degrees. This was gonna be CHILLY!

We got to the field and got all set up. We didn’t launch until almost 10:30. Matt took off and I took off right behind him. The air was nice and smooth still.

Matt followed me down to the river a little ways and disappeared shortly thereafter. A short while after I lost sight of Matt, I saw him a couple miles away over by the LZ. I wondered if he had engine trouble or if he was just too cold. I was pretty comfortable so I kept on flying. I love this area!

I saw a couple deer and managed to get a few shots of them. Unfortunately it was so fast that I missed a couple camera settings and they didn’t come out real great…:

After I was done with the deer (couldn’t find them anymore) I decided to go see what was up with Matt. I got close to the LZ and I saw him with his stuff already loaded in his truck. I landed to talk for a bit. I turned off my motor higher up this time, made my approach, and had another crappy landing.. I slipped in the wet grass and wiped out! That’s 2 bad ones in a row! Oh well….

As I suspected, Matt landed because he was too cold. He wasn’t wearing waterproof shoes, and his feet were wet from the wet grass… so his feet were unbearably cold, as were his fingers.

We talked for a while and since I was quite comfortable I set up to fly again. My camera battery indicator was flashing, meaning I didn’t have many shots left to go… so I left the camera in the car this time. I took off and flew around for a few minutes when I spotted something in the field next to the runway. It was a huge bird eating something! I thought it was a buzzard or something. I swooped down pretty low and the bird didn’t fly away. He was using his wings to cover up his kill, and he was NOT going to give it up to this big bird!!! Sensing that this was possibly the photo opp of a lifetime, I quickly landed to head off on foot and shoot this scene. This time I landed with power, and my landing was perfect.

Unfortunately, I had left my big camera bag at home. I only had one lens and the one battery, which was almost dead. The lens was a 17-85mm. I really wished I had my 70-300mm telephoto so I could get good close-ups, but stupid me had to pack light… This was going to be a challenge with only 85mm of lens. I grabbed the camera and started stalking. I would shoot a few, move a little closer, shoot a few more, and repeat. As I got closer, I saw that it was a red-tailed hawk, not a buzzard. He was beautiful, big, and healthy looking. I would move while the bird was focused on his meal, then stop when he looked up. He looked at me several times, and I just kept creeping closer. I ended up probably 10 yards from him and got these spectacular shots:

My all-time favorite photo I’ve taken:

Those were the closest ones I got. The next time I crept forward he flew about 20 yards away and landed. We watched each other for a few, then I went ahead and got as close as I wanted to the kill (about 10 feet from it) and I went totally still. I was hoping that if I held real still that maybe he’d come back. He finally got tired of waiting for me to leave and he flew away:

What an incredible photo opp! I felt really privileged to get to sit there and photograph such a magnificent bird.

I headed back to my car and decided maybe I’d fly again. It was now noon, but it was still pretty cool and the wind hadn’t picked up much at all. I was hoping it wouldn’t be a repeat of the 1:00 flight for the reporter a couple weeks ago… that one was scary! Matt decided he’d try it, too. He was going to try a reverse launch, but that wasn’t working:

He was going to give up when I told him I was going to fly again no matter what. I went ahead and launched and told him the air was still OK. Matt launched and we flew around for a short while. It was getting a little thermally. They weren’t sharp bumps, but I was definitely feeling patches of major lift. Matt said he saw me take a small tip collapse. I never felt it, but it was enough to persuade Matt to land right away. I landed a couple minutes later. I landed with power again, and I had a nice landing.

I had a great time flying today. The hawk was the highlight of the day for sure. I won’t forget that for a long time!

.

Friday 11/2/07

I got my butt out of work at 5:05 today so I could get in a little after-work flying. Rush hour traffic sucks. I got to the field around 6:20.

There were already several pilots there, and everyone was already flying. I got setup and did a forward into about a 3 mph breeze. No sweat.

A view of tonight’s parking lot:

I ran into Matt and chased him around with the camera for a little while:

It got dark pretty quickly:

Toward the end of my flying, I spotted a coyote. I was able to get a picture that is almost recognizable. Almost… I guess it’s not too bad for a shot of a wild animal on the run from about 40′ AGL in very low light.

It was finally time to come in… I was on my landing approach and I decided I was coming down a little too fast, so I gave it some gas to make sure I’d make the field. Then I turned off the motor, which I guess was not at a very good time or something because I suddenly swung at the ground really fast and had a really hard and somewhat painful landing, which ended up with some sliding on my knees. What the hell was that? I hadn’t blown a landing like that in a long ass time. I guess I’ll chalk it up to needing to eat and feeling pretty hypoglycemic at the time. Anyway it sucked, but luckily there was no damage to my equipment and I was able to shake it off.

That’s it for this entry. 30 minutes in the air. Many shots fired, hardly any good ones. Late evening is really hard for flying pics. Pictures or not, flying is always a good time!

.