Its Better to be on the ground..."Wishing"
This morning started out beautifully calm. When I got out of bed a little before 5am it looked to be the perfect morning for a long flight. Expecting just that, I mixed an extra gallon of AV Gas and headed out to Hampden & Simms. In the beginning it was a steady 1 or 2 mph but after setting up it had increased to 5.
When I started to launched I saw that my heading was dangerously close to clipping a metal fence post but... before I had rolled 20 feet and a long way from the post, a gust blew in and picked me up. I was pulling brake to the level between my shoulder and ear. The wing was barely penetrating. When I eased the brake input, I aaccelerated and climbed to 50 feet where I did a slow roll and landed by the truck. I'm not sure when I started to pull brake, I may have added a little pressure when I noticed the fence post but it's more probable that I was in the air and was just reacting to the wing.
The wind front continued to build over the next 20 minutes and when I left it was a steady 20 mph. The lesson to be learned is that a trend tends to persist and wishing it will go down..."don't necessarily make it so"
Equipment Notes:
The Garmin 176-c is dead..I've located and purchased a used unit for $260 on E-Bay.
The Fortrex battery is not holding a charge for very long at all.
The new FB battery lost it's charge so there are doubts that the alternator is charging the battery.
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