BlogPPG

Sunday 10-28-07

It had been almost 2 weeks since I had flown last…. withdrawal symptoms were peaking…. it was time to fly. The weather finally looked promising, and I wasn’t missing this for anything! It gets dark so early now that in order to make it to the field with plenty of time I had to leave before the Colts game was over. Bummer. I knew they could win without me watching, though. Today flying was more important! I got to the field around 5:00, and a ton of people were already there - Phil, Greg, Brandon, Jeremy, Ola, & Faith were all there. I hurried up and got set up. The wind was light and variable, and I heard that there had been a lot of blown launches. I set up and got up quickly on my first try.

Brandon was smoking it up on his Spice:

The trees are looking gorgeous!

I underestimated the cold a little bit… it was chilly! It was probably just barely over 50 degrees. I caught up with Ola and ran around with him for a while:

Greg was heading back toward the field as I was heading away from it. Greg was downwind and full speed bar on his Spice. The speed we were closing on each other was amazing!

I took some photos of Ola playing around down low:

I like how the shadow looks in that one! Here are some more antics:

We both flew low by a house for a few. The people there were loving every minute of it. It’s great to see the smiling faces. One of them ran in and grabbed a camera:

The obligatory foot shot:

I hadn’t put a whole lot of gas in my tank before I took off, and I was pretty far from the field at this point, so I turned around. I saw Faith flying off in the distance. This shot is kind of boring, but I like the simplicity of it, and I like the way the ground contours show up with the low sun:

When I got back toward the field, I saw Phil, Jeremy, and Ola grouped together. I followed them out toward the orchard:

Jeremy had his camera on him and he took this picture of me:

When he was done shooting me, he did some serious carving over the fields:

Looks pretty steep!

I was trying to get a photo of my gas tank for a good view of my gas situation. I didn’t get the tank, but I thought this was a kind of cool perspective:

I checked my mirror and my fuel situation was not good! I was almost on fumes! Time to head back. On my way back I got this view:

Greg stopped by to say ‘hi’. Here he comes:

Closer:

Up close and personal:

Faith was on her way back, too:

I got back to the field and landed. I had been flying for just over an hour. I hadn’t put too much fuel in my tank, and when I checked it on the ground I only had about 1/2″ of gas in there. Not everyone had landed yet, and there was still plenty of light. Hmm…. Time to re-fuel and go again! This time I’m grabbing gloves first! I got set up and launched again around 6:40. I stayed close to the field because there really wasn’t that much light left. Faith had landed and it looked like she was getting ready to put away the playground ball. I swooped down and made a kicking motion with my feet to indicate that I wanted to play with it a little more. She saw my request and left it out there. I figured I might try to pick it up with my feet… I had never even kicked the ball the few times I had tried it… got close but never contacted it. Tonight I was in the zone, though. I came down real low and grabbed on my first try! I took it up and flew a couple victory laps with it between my feet, woo-hoo’ing the whole time. Everyone on the ground was cheering, too! Jeremy got a picture of me with the ball:

I dropped the ball back down on the field and continued to play for a while, buzzing low and practicing foot dragging. I landed after about 20 minutes.

Tonight was TOO MUCH FUN! Not flying for that long and then flying was a lot like not having sex for a long time and then getting lucky. It was much more intense and just too fun for words! Too bad we’re almost out of flying days for the season…

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Tonight was beautiful. Calm winds and a new location to fly.

Awesome sunset

Tomorrow is going to be a wash but this weekend is looking good.

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Another zero wind night… well, almost zero, it was less then 2. Anyway, had a good inflation and launch.

Proof that I flew over the moon

and under it

How can you argue with this photo, really? does it get any better?

Our little dog “Riley” doesn’t understand where i go. He watches me launches but never looks up to find me, just constantly scans the fields awaiting my unvanishing… dogs are great!

And the unforgiving no wind speed landing, you’ll notice I didn’t post the photos of me on the ground… in the weeds… on one knee… nope, won’t see those here. I’ll just tell you it was as perfect a landing as could be

If this was a video, you could see the wind mills in the distance were not turning. Its not, so I’ll tell you, it was calm and smooth.

Here is another shot of the sunset, this time from… say 1000 feet, give or take

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Tonight was zero wind, ZERO. I had difficulty deciding which direction to launch zero.

A hard run and I was up

The air was smooth and I few low.

I came in nice and low to make sure the wind sock was still hanging straight down.

Over all a nice flight. Nothing spectacular to report but my wife got some surprisingly good shots with her camera phone. I never even pulled out my camera, it was much to smooth to waste taking photos when i could spiral and fly next to the soccer game. All i can say was wow, that was smooth!

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Jason was out doing his thing last week when a reporter showed up. He spent some time with her and got a nice positive article in a local Indiana newspaper.

Check it out here

Congrats on some positive light on our awesome sport!

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