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Thursday, June 18, 2009

#294 Simms

I got up early to see if the Lucent site would be a good replacement for South Park. Unfortunately not, it looks great but the slope is to the north and the prevailing winds are from the south. If it is coming from the north it might work as long as the winds are nil to light but trees on the north end could create some rotor. An easterly wind would also work but that almost never happens. At the same time I was appraising the site, John Sieb called and I gave him the good and bad news...Great for foot launch bad for trikes. We decided to meet at Simms

He beat me by a few minutes and was setting up by the road. The weeds have grown to waist height over most of the field. John couldn't drive on the field and was planning to walk out to find a place to set-up, I drove out and found a place where the vegetation was lower at the North end of the field. The wind was light from the South East which was perfect because I could roll down the grade and stay in the short weeds. John took off while I was setting up and the wind shifted 180 degrees pinning me to the earth.

So...I sat in the buggy and watched John while he carved up the sky. At one point he flew over and made a gesture to say....What are you doing? The wind continued to build from the North West and I was resigned to a No Fly Day. Just as I was ready to give up the wind came down and I bit the bullet and started the 4 stroke. Amazing...I don't know if it could be considered a down wind launch, but in the time it took to get up and turn back, the wind had returned as strong as ever.



John and I stayed up 45 minutes and had a great flight. The air was a 3 on the bump scale so I didn't attempt to go all the way to Red Rocks but I did go to the far end of Bear Creek Park and only turned back when I started getting tossed by the air flowing over the hump backs. Landing was strange, every time I set a final approach for the truck, the buggy would catch some lift and I had to go around again. Finally I said the hell with it and landed long in the tall weeds.

It's All Good.

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