Flying Reports

Springtime in St. Louis

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:35:14 -0600

Robert Samuels: Hi Flyers: 65 degrees and full sun at the sod farm today. Just another typical January 30th.
Chris was flying along the main path to the cross roads. Big Wayne and I decided to go to the levee where we set up highstarts. The wind was about 10 -12 mph so I tried flying without ballast in my Aspire. It worked ok but the need to clear the irrigation equipment made me a little nervous. So I added 8 oz. and it me a little more confident about making the return trip upwind. It didn't seem, to me, to hurt the flying.
There was some good lift but it was fast moving (duh). The highstarts were working great in the wind. Easy high launches. Chris was using only 150 ft. of mono and was getting even better launches.
I got several very nice flights and a whole bunch of very short one. Like 2 minutes. I noticed that Chris was doing much better however even he was up and down quickly a few times.
It was a lovely day but the high point was that I was able to sing Happy Birthday in person to Big Wayne.
You should have been there. :)
El Roberto

Wayne Wimbish: Indeed it was a very nice day. I had come prepared for some wind chill but kept shedding layers as the day went on ending up with just a sweater. The warm January weather has surely made the winter seem much shorter.
I ran into a snag right off the bat. Had sent in my tx to Airtronics for service last month and forgot that I would have to rebind my rx before I could fly. Turned everything on and nothing. duh. Thanks to the miracle of smart phones, I was able to go online and download a manual to aid my failing memory on how to get things going again. Mission accomplished.
As Robert said, he put out his short high start and I ganged two of mine together to give 100' of rubber and 500' of line. After Robert saw me launch on that he came over and joined me and never went back to his. We were getting some pretty good launches but I think Chris was still out-launching us. My belief is that was because he was using 150 meters of mono (492 feet). The big advantage of the mono that I could see is that it didn't have the weight of the rubber to hold down the launch. Of course Robert said that he wasn't strong enough to pull back the mono so it would not have helped him :-)
Since Robert and I were over by the levy we had to contend with the big rotor coming down off the hill from the houses. If you could penetrate out over the houses you could find lift, but with no ballast, I only made it over there once. I guess I really need to get some if I want to fly on breezy days. Of course, we also had to contend with the irrigation sprinkler on landing, which for me always increases the pucker factor.
Chris was over by the main road so he was further back and away from 79. It looked like he benefited a lot from lift coming off the buildings and took it downwind quite a few times. Chris certainly did not look like he had any problems with the wind.
Robert and I had moved from there as we thought that field was marginally soft. I assume that since Chris decided not to move, that he found enough dry spots that it was not a problem after all. If we had stuck with him and not bailed we probably would have had some longer flights.
Well it was indeed a very good day. Being a BD made it just that much better.
Blessings, Wayne

Eagle Cliff Sunday Flying

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 23:44:10 -0600

Mike Johnson: There was a little flying to be had up here as well. I took Ken up on his invitation to join him at Eagle Cliff. The USAIRNET said 14 until the afternoon then slowly decreasing wind speed. Sounded like a fun light wind day - I needed to get out and fly. I met up with Ken at 11:00 at the cemetery along with a couple guys traveling through who had seen our website and wanted to join us for some slope flying. When I read Ken's email I thought they were new to flying or new to slope soaring so I was expecting some buddy box flying. I was wrong, they had all their slope gliders packed in their small car they were traveling with. They were on a hunt for good sloping! All four of us tossed our planes out and we had a great time. At times the wind would die down but there usually seemed to be some thermals out past the cliff we could maintain our altitude in. Then the wind would pick up and we had just enough energy for a loop and a roll before conserving our airspeed to keep our altitude safe. There was the occasional low altitude save making it back to the hill, retrieve, and toss back out. When I wasn't flying I was on the hunt for some good photos and caught a hawk and my first eagle with my telephoto - I wish he was a little closer.
I had a great time despite the low winds. I think our visitors did too - I hope they made it home safely and they come back again in the future. You're always welcome.
Mike

Ken Trudeau: I received a PM on RC Groups yesterday evening but by the time I was reading it, it was 2:30 am. Dave (Zenmaniac" on RC Groups) who I had a chat with on his Alula couple years back. Dave is from Wisconsin, near Madison. I had made a comment of some of his flying sites at one time as his hills lined with trees and he flew over a river.
Dave was impressed with or our flying site of Fults that he had seen from a video. Was looking some time to give me a call when running through St. Louis. Dave and his brother Brian were visiting family in Northern Arkansas, and brought several slopers to hopefully fly while in Arkansas. They found lots of hills with trees.
I was able to get hold of Dave in the morning and found out they were coming down Hwy 44. They stopped by the house, and we headed off to Eagle Cliff, to meet Mike. Forecast for winds out of the West in the mid teens, with temps in the 50's, "sounded great to me!" So today was good for Eagle Cliff and on Monday would be O.K with winds SW for Fults.
It was great being able to fly with others who had Alula's, three in the air at one time. Brian and Dave has spent some time with there designs on the wings to make it more bird like. Mike was able to make some high speed pass's with increase of winds from time to time with his IYF -44 wing. We could feel the warmth of the thermals on our faces as the thermals rolled through. Couple Hawks and one Eagle joined us. At one time we were off the right of the hill enjoying a thermal with the a hawk going up with us. Surprised to not to have the buzzard with us today. We had about an hour of flying and the winds started to die down. This was expected into the late afternoon, but was happening already by 12:00. This was O.K. as Brian and Dave had a long trip ahead of them back to Wisconsin.
Enjoyed the company and they are welcomed to visit on there next trip through St. Louis.
http://s289.photobucket.com/albums/ll237/Eternalflight_2008/WISCONSIN%20VISITORS/
Cheers,
Ken

Dave Lorentzen (reprinted with permission from RCGroups): So my brother, Bryan, and I had a road trip these past 4 days to visit my mother and her husband in northern Arkansas. It's about an 11 hour drive, which we wouldn't normally make in January because of snow and weather. As you know, this year's different.
Of course we took a couple of slope planes with us, I took Alula and Weasel, Bryan took his killer Alula, Sally, and home-design flying wing. Northern AR is hilly, in the foothills of the Ozarks. Unfortunately, like here, too G- D- many trees!
The community contains several man-made lakes, created by damming the local streams with large dirt dams. You can see several of the lakes in the picture below. We visited sevaral on Saturday. Most, on the slope side away from the water, have lots of trees in the down-stream ravine. We found one that was pretty clear, with somewhat the direction of the wind. It had about a 60 foot slope, and fairly open fetch. We threw for about 15 minutes, but the wind was quartering over the trees that outlined the slope, and the turbulence knocked us down quite readily. I included a photo below for "DS Darryl", because it looks like it has some serious DS potential.
We were treated to an awesome collection if turkey vultures on Saturday, more than 200 collected over the lake we were at. Pretty amazing to see these 6-foot wingspan birds in such great numbers and flying in such close quarters.
Photo and videos below didn't capture the entire flock, but can give you a taste of what we saw.

We were not to be dissuaded from sloping. On Saturday evening, I checked the wind for St Louis for our return. I knew of a slope, Fults Hill, on the Illinois side of the Mississippi and a bit south of St. Louis from my viewings of RCG threads. Predicted 12 mph from the W, I knew Fults Hill to be SW. So at about 7:00 on Saturday evening I sent a PM to Ken (Eternalflight), whom I had emailed a couple of years ago because of my journeys through the area to Arkansas, to see if Fults would work for W wind. We were planning on getting up and leaving by 6:00 on Sunday morning, so I half didn't expect to see a reply from Ken in time. I got up at 5:00 -- and saw that he had responded at 2:45AM (are all slopers up that that hour? It seems like everyone I know is...)
Ken invited us to stop by his house, and then he'd take us to Eagle's Cliff Cemetery. Ken's house is just west of St Louis, and we got there around 10:30. He graciously showed us around his workshop and projects, which include an FPV system he's working on which has a tracking antenna, and booster receivers which will give him a 20 mile range . With this is a big flying wing in the build process that has a 5000mAh battery with a GPS. He currently flies a Radian with a modified GoPro camera for FPV. LOTS of slope planes, including Alula, Weasel, Le Fish, Le Big Fish, and about 8-10 others, including some thermal ships.
After about a 30 minute guided drive, we arrived at Eagle's Cliff Cemetery (http://g.co/maps/jha88). Road all the way to the top -- nice! I recognized the site from a write-up I had seen where a friend of Ken's, Chris, had completed a documented 8 hour slope flight. Yes, it was a good site! We met Mike there, who had a couple of flying wings for the day's flying. The slope's fetch was the full Mississippi river basin, broad and flat (Ken said the big floods from the 90's came to the base of the hill! Tombstones from 1815 and before, a complete mausoleum facing the slope -- what a great site to be buried!
Their club has negotiated use of the site, with conditions that the users have AMA membership for insurance purposes. Bryan and I are both members so we qualified.
The weather was mid-40's, with sunny cloudless blue sky. You can tell Ken's a serious sloper who could make it in Wisconsin, maybe with a little acclimation -- he wears a full snowmobile suit and has an insulated transmitter mit. Bryan and I were enjoying the warm weather bare handed!
The wind was up the hill, maybe a little from the right. BIG thermals specked out our Weasels and made for good playtime. The sink made us land a couple of times (on this hill, "better safe" was the rule, "than sorry" was not an option if you wanted to see your plane again!
True to the site name, we were treated to an eagle fly-over.
When conditions lightened up earlier than predicted, we switched to all Alulas for the last 1/2 hour of our 1.5 hrs there. Then the wind died -- which was for the best, as we still had another 6.5 hours of driving back to WI, and would have never quit if we had the choice.
Ken was pretty excited that we were flying Sallys in WI. He does a lot of builds with EPP kits, but not any bagged wings (yet).
A big THANKS to our hosts, Ken and Mike, for sharing their slope and for the sloper camaraderie. We had a great time, and will promise to show you the same if you get to Wisconsin. Ken made me promise that if we head to Wilson Lake, KS, sometime, that we make sure he knows about the trip to join us.
Ok... sorry for the tome...

-= Dave

Mike Johnson, Ken Trudeau and Bryan Lorentzen at Eagle Cliff.

Schooled Again

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:33:55 -0600

Robert Samuels: Hi Flyers: I got to Forest Park about 11:30 today and Chris showed up at 1:00. It was not too cold and the winds were virtually zero. Lift was very, very light but was everywhere. Well .... almost everywhere. Chris was using his new launch technique so I didn't have the advantage I had last time. That means we were back to him outlaunching me by 50 ft.
Another problem I had was that the things he taught me before were not working. Remember he taught me to look at the topography and look for where the sun was hitting the various slopes and how that correlated with the wind directions and trees. Well ... there was no sun, no wind and, for me, no sense of where to look for lift.
Except he found it every time. No, not most the time .... every #@$% time. Guess what .... I did not. Here is an example of what I had to suffer through. One flight I went where I was sure the lift should be .... after I sank out I saw Chris on the opposite side of the field skying out. So I asked .... "how did you know to go there?". His reply? Well I saw that there was no lift where you were flying so I went somewhere else. Darn! Really DARN! That approaches DAMNATION!!!!!!!
We flew and flew and had to recharge we were flying so much. I figured that it must be about 2:30 so I checked my watch. It was 4:30!!! Holy Mackeral!!! I'd been flying 5 hours. Time flies when you are having fun ... flying. :)
Another wonderful day soaring. I wonder when I am going to get tired it it?
El Roberto

Forget More Than You Know

Mon, 9 Jan 2012 23:14:33 -0600

Robert Samuels: Hi Flyers: It was another lovely day at the park. Chris and I were there for the warmth, sun and light winds. My soaring education continued.
I think I'm registered for a graduate level course now. It has progressed from Chris teaching me about wind shifts. Now it is identifying terrain features and distant thermal generators. Even to the degree of observing which slope features were receiving sun and which were not. Also included was trying to teach me to integrate these concepts.
Sure there was a lot of telling me to be aware of the wind shifts ... but now he threw in how I needed to be cognizant of the varying wind temperatures and how they related to the shifts.
This went on for 3 hours of flying and the constant demonstration that Chris is almost magical in his ability to kick my behind.
I left a tired and, hopefully, a better flier. Hopefully.
El Roberto

Chris Lee: The funny thing is, everything that I'm telling Robert now, I learned from him.
Which just goes to prove, he's forgotten more than I'll ever know. :)
What I didn't teach him, however, is how to fly smoothly. He seems to have picked that up on his own, and fairly recently. I kind of miss the old stall-and-dive routine, could always tell which one was his plane. And he used to always be lower, now, not so much.
Fun times, maybe we'll do it again soon... like Wednesday.
Chris

Saturday at the Farm

Sat, 7 Jan 2012 13:53:39 -0600

Ed Rau: I arrived at the sod farm around 10:15 and Art, Nelson & Gene were already there putting planes together. Glauco was there and setting up his 3 winches. Rich arrived shortly after I did, as did Dave Quist. With a clear blue sky there was a slight amount of wind from the NW. Art, Nelson, Gene & Rich were all flying RES. Dave & I were flying moldies. Lift was not real strong but it was there. My best flight was 20min. We packed up & left around 3pm. As we drove out, Glauco was putting his equipment away also. All in all, a great day for flying....especially for the 1st week of January. We get to do it all again tomorrow. Anyone interested? Like the man always says...."You should have been there".
Ed

Glauco Lago: It was indeed a nice day at the sod farm. I arrived a bit earlier just to find all the dog people there but after about half hour they left and I could start setting up the equipment.
Someone from the club drove by and asked if I needed help but it seems the only help I can get is from a psychiatrist since the amount of stuff I bring to fly increases exponentially. Today I had 3 winches, 3 batteries, 3 planes, a few rolls of mono, a bunch of tools, 2 tripods, a camera and a laptop.
The webcam and laptop were there to test a software developed to help recognizing the base B. Basically it track all objects in the air and if a plane goes by a specific line it sounds a horn. I had it at base A just to see if it really works and it does. Doesn't recognize a plane at 800 ft and field of vision is only 70° but better than nothing.
It was a bit windier than forecasted but still very nice for January. Had a few nice launches pretty close to 900 ft and flew both Freestylers without any major issues. Had the Aspire with me and thought about flying it but again it was so nice flying the B planes the Aspire continues in the bag since August.

Rich,Ed, Nelson, Art, Dave and Gene were flying at the triangle, they were all nice to leave me big room so I could run some speed without fear of finding them in the air near me, thanks guys.
It seems Creamsicle is back but I didn't see it flying, Art said it was as nice as he remember it to fly. Nelson was having a rare battery issue with the Daedalus but Rich with his Ava pro, Dave with the Vulture and Ed with the Superstar were all having fun.
Glauco