Back from surgery ... Flight # 701

Finally....!   It's been a long long winter.  The surgery went well, my shoulder has a new ball joint and I've recovered 100% of the Range of Motion.  I'm working on regaining the strength I lost sitting on my ass for the last 5 months.  The only real problem is what I think is bursitis that was caused by the fall I took last year at Carter Lake.

This morning was perfect.   The temp was 45 degrees and the winds were nill from the south west.
I had to "jump start the paramotor because I had left the key in the last time I test ran it in Jan.  The launch was less than perfect.  The wing fell off to the left and it took 50 feet of runway to get it up and stable.  Right after takeoff ,I discovered that the trim cam had slipped below the power loops, causing the wing to turn a slow right.  I climbed to 300 feet circling the field and then went to work getting the cam sorted out.  It seemed much harder to move than the other times this has happened but that was probably more due to my lack of strength than anything else.
Eventually I worked the cam into position and climbed to 900 feet where I set off to the south.  There was a dramatic change in temperature at 500 feet where it was at least 20 degrees warmer.  I played around for 30 minutes and returned to the field where Robert Kittila was setting up.  Rather than hassle with jumping the Paramotor again I orbited the field and waited for Robert to launch.  A motorcyclist rode in and he and Robert started chatting.  It looked like it was going to be a long talk so I practiced wing overs for awhile and landed.
Upon landing I noticed a break in the cage tubing inside of the prior repairs. It looks very flyable with a little duct tape but I think I'll get it welded ASAP instead.
Robert took off and I chatted with a new pilot .... Don, who has Delta and paragliding experience.
Beautiful rig ....Kangook with a Moster engine.  He has just finished training with Mike Robenson and was not 100%  happy with the experience.  Unfortunently he didn't get off after 3 attempts and I had to leave so I don't know if he ever did.  It's not easy training at sea level and going home to 5500 feet.
It's nice to be back in the air.

#360 Chatfield

This morning I woke at 4:30

but couldn't drag my butt out of bed.

Maybe not a first but certainly unusual. I tried to blame it on the weather but no matter how windblown the clouds looked it was calm at the surface and judging from the dirty air over Denver the inversion probably covered the first 1500 feet AGL.
SOME OPPORTUNITIES ARE LOST...MOVE ON
I made up for it with a nice one this afternoon. There were lots of clouds mid day that built and diminished by 5:00pm. I was concerned about the virga dropping all over the place but once again I didn't notice any "puffs" and figured that the virga was too high to be affecting the surface.
After watching and pacing for 45 minutes at the house I said to myself ....What the heck go to the field and if you don't fly ...it won't be the first time. I arrived at 6:00pm, the winds were very light from the SW. The air was warm. It turned to the WNW while I set up and dropped to 1 knot or less.
My take off must have looked pretty bad but I was grinning from ear to ear. It fell to the left and overshot...started to frontal...fell to the right...came back up and when I finally felt good about it...I added some throttle and did a proper run-out. The new Throttle set-up is much better. The Brake toggle is held in the 3rd and 4th finger leaving my index finger and pinkie to work the throttle. I'm sure the control issues will go away as I get used to the low hangpoint.
As bad as it looked I never felt as if it were not recoverable. GO THUMPER!
The air was good 2 or 3 on the bump scale. I didn't travel too far and mostly carved smaller and smaller turns over the patch. One thing that has been bothering me is the left beaner is one inch longer than the right. I was able to equalize them later and I'm glad I was able to take the time to examine it while in flight. The loops in the new footsteering got in the way but I'm not ready to change it until I've flown it some more.
When I started to notice the bumps were getting bigger I turned back to the truck and landed. It was a nice landing, I came in from the North and managed to stay just above the surface for 200 feet even though the grade was ascending. When I set down it was where I wanted to be, maybe a bit close because I almost took out the windsock with the wing. As I was packing up the breeze dropped 10 degrees and picked up. It felt good...It was a no muss ...no fuss flight...just a nice taste of the sky before the cold front blows in. Tomorrow it's forecast to be 23knots at 3:00pm. Think I'll go sailing.

Glider Flight

The wind was blowing hard all day. Which was great as long as it was blowing my trailer north. I was afraid that it would not be flyable but Bob showed up 30 minutes early and we were in the air by 2pm. He joked that people often got sick , I assured him that I knew there was a wave out there waiting to turn me green but I'd been lucky so far. I knew when he broke out the reserves Doc Holliday was serious. Since I wasn't a paying customer he was entitled to do whatever he wanted . I challenged him to show me his stuff and he did. We rolled and stalled and a couple of other maneuvers where we dropped a wing and recovered by going inverted.

We got in 3 flights. 35 minutes...45 and 25. Each time we were towed to 3000 feet and on the second flight we climbed to 8500 feet. By the last flight the thermal activity had come down to where there was no lift...only stong wind from the south.

Someday I'll get poetic and try to discribe it....For now ...all I can say is awesome!