#300

The Big Three Oh Oh

Lucent...Light winds S.E.

I awoke before the alarm.... again ...so I decided to check out the new site south of C-470 and west of Lucent. Yesterdays rain had made the freshly graded soil a little slick but I decided to go for it anyway. I was able to lay out the wing without gettingit all muddy but my boots had aquired about 2 inches of clay and the wheels on the buggy were carring a bunch of extra weight. No problem...After I set -up. I just sat in the machine and scrapped the mud off my boots and the wheels. It wasn't wet, more like clay than anything else.

The climb out was slow but once I was clear of the graded soil and over grass I got some lift and explored the area. This is a pretty good site, enough room to abort, lots of places to set down in an emerency and easy axcess to chatfield. It was mildly bumpy so I didn't go over to Chatfield next time I'd like to try. I noticed a balloon over the lake and it would be great to play with one of those guys again. The sky looked good but later in the flight I noticed that the clouds were starting to get blown out and I think there was some serious mixing at high altitude.

I did use more brake pressure and that helped smooth things out. It would be great to know exactly how much travel I have in these brakes...I'll just have to keep pulling more and find out where the stall is.

Landing was a drag....It got real bumpy at 50 feet, it might have been the elevation changes around the field but whatever it was caused me to overshoot and I rolled right into the drainage where the mud was like soup. The wing got a little mud and the buggy weighed a ton. It took an hour to get everything cleaned up back at the house. No damage.

Yesterday I talked with Terry and he is going to start the new cage on Monday. The 64 inch GSC Prop should boost my climb rate considerably.