Wendy checking out the scene and getting ready to chase hang-gliders...
Fearing the prior day's dust devil orgy at launch, I opted to get up in the air early along with Alex Cuddy and Darren Darsey. My stomach was in knots and the only way to cure that is to simply start flying. Waiting for a nice cycle to come on through, I decided to launch. Within no time I was up to about 9700' and heading on over to the flats. Once over on the rim, I found a lot of sink and was hunting every where I could for a dusty and lift. I thought I'd be on the deck soon as I was sinking out, then my vario started beeping ever so slightly...I dumped all VG and worked what I could, bobbling around, not wishing to land. I finally dialed-in the drift of the thermal and was comfortably back up to 9k again...what a great feeling.
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Doug "The Flying Canuck" Doerfler taking a break after his 70+ mile triangle on Thursday...our friend raised the bar that day...good flying, Brother!
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The drift was taking me over to Douglas, so that is where I went. There seemed to be a steady trail of dusty's to follow along that path, too.
Note: At the time of this flight I thought I was on my way to Withrow, but as it turned out, I was headed to Douglas...need to rely on my GPS a little more while in the air rather than "map memorization"...
Once over Douglas, I found a huge amount of lift over the city and worked that for all it was worth...that put me back up to 9k. I decided at this time to just go for an out and back flight to the grassy LZ of the soccer field. I pulled on the VG and started my trip back, diving at dusty's along the way as I found them. There was one more low save to be had, but other than that the flight back was trouble free.
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Brian "Kavu" Foster had great flights Thursday and Friday...
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Once back over the Columbia, I flew on over to the Butte (launch) for fun and boated around in the strong lift admiring Chelan and the scenery from 9k again...what a flight. Overall, Douglas is about a 26 mile out and return. I was happy with my decision making this time around, too. I was one of the first in the soccer field LZ, but this time it felt really good as I watched all the other pilots come in from their flights, too.
This trip to Chelan really opened up a lot of doors for me with regard to XC flying. Wendy and I are looking forward to heading back again for next year.
Time: 2 hours, 45 minutes
Distance: 26 miles out and return
Below is a very short video while in the air...I had the camera on video rather than the picture setting, so everything from that day is short jerky clips like this...