Oz Report

Mitch and the ET for landing practice

(Highland Aerosports, Ridgely, Maryland, USA)

Highland Aerosports Flight Park|Jim Rooney|Mitchell "Mitch" Shipley|Mitch Shipley|video

Mitch Shipley held a landing clinic during the East Coast Championship.  It was well attended.

Mitch Shipley «elektratow» writes:

http://youtu.be/hmQotckQFdg

Here's a good example of what Jim Rooney was talking about - failure to hold a flare.  The pilot rather "double pumps" and gets a less than perfect landing, complete with a play-by-play call from Rich C and I.

http://youtu.be/jVB2xHN0XPo

Here is the same pilot with a nice example of good hand transitions to pretty good hand/body position.  There is a bit of cross controlling and "floatiness" (that's a technical term) going on and he could have carried speed a bit lower, but makes a completely acceptable landing with a nice flare.

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Coastal flying in Denmark

(Holbaek,+Sealand,+Denmark)

video

Arne Haugaard «falcon» sends:

From a recent flight in local costal area at Holbaek, Sealand in Denmark – I just love my motorized wing, notice how easy engines starts at the end of the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8gbtpXiq0Y

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TFR's

Ron Gleason

Ron Gleason «xcflying» writes:

With all the fires in the western states, dignitaries flying around, presidential campaigning and other activities occurring this the season for many TFR's that we must avoid.  Critical for competitions, formal and informal, and recreational flying to examine every morning and during the day.

Here are a few links I have been using

http://tfr.faa.gov/tfr2/list.html - FAA list.  Provides links to graphical version overlay-ed on sectionals.  The SUA button, useful for flight computers, does not work.

http://www.2ld.de/tfr2kml - include the KML file in Google Earth.  Easy to visualize TFR, see exact location including ceiling and also has a time line feature to see if the TFR expires during the day.  Requires manual refresh or restarting GE to get latest data.

http://sggate.arc.nasa.gov:9518/GoogleEarth/tfr.kml - From the FAA.  Refreshes every 15 minutes.  No time line bar.

Lets be safe out there and give these TFR a wide berth, specifically if it is a fire fighting operation.  While we want to go out and have fun, we are just playing the fire fighting folks are trying to save land, structures, lives and their own skin.  We can always fly another day!

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Even better landings

Dan Utinski|video

The video here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-35_Lightning_II

The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is a family of single-seat, single-engine, fifth generation multirole fighters under development to perform ground attack, reconnaissance, and air defense missions with stealth capability.[6][7] The F-35 has three main models; the F-35A is a conventional takeoff and landing variant, the F-35B is a short take off and vertical-landing variant, and the F-35C is a carrier-based variant.

Thanks to Dan Utinski

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Don't fill out the USHPA competition surveys

(USHPA headquarters)

USHPA

Competition pilots receive surveys to fill out after competitions.  They results go to the meet organizer, but no results are given to the pilots, or to the meet director.  I suggest that competition pilots refuse to fill out the surveys until they are promised that they will be given the results also.  This promise can be given by the meet organizer or by the USHPA or both.

It is your data after all.

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2012 World Record Encampment

(Zapata, Texas, USA)

Dustin Martin|Facebook|Jon "Jonny" Durand jnr|Manfred Ruhmer|Moyes Litespeed RX|record|Timothy Ettridge|Wills Wing|Wills Wing T2C|World Record Encampment 2012

You can find the flights here http://chorlton.homeip.net/spotmap/zapata.html. Choose Yesterday Jonny and Dustin (Thanks to David Wheeler for putting up this page for us).

Dustin and Jonny flew from Zapata in south Texas to just east of Lubbock up in the Texas panhandle, approximately 475 miles (I'll know more accurately later today) with Dustin landing two miles further north than Jonny.  Many people around the world followed their record flights on the internet as they happened.

Dustin launched first just before 10 AM (Manfred and Paris launched at 10 AM in 2001). Jonny launched fifteen minutes later.  They were in radio contact and sometimes in visual contact with each other throughout the flight.  Timothy Ettridge was driving for Jonny and they agreed during the flight to have Tim bring them both back to Zapata (apparently the stayed the night up north).

The winds were 20 to 30 mph out of the south southeast, which is what you want here in Zapata.  They turn south at about 200 miles out.

Cloud base started at 2500' AGL (421' ground level at Zapata) and rose to over 10,000' near the end of the day up on the Edwards Plateau (2,500' ground level).

Dustin said that he was climbing at 10,000' at 150 fpm at 8:30 PM. Sunset was 9:01 in Lubbock, and Jonny landed at 9:02. They both carried strobe lights to allow them to land within a half our of sundown.

Dustin states that they both went on final glide wing tip to wing tip and Dustin was able to eek out two extra miles on Jonny.  Dustin in a Wills Wing T2C 144 and Jonny in a Moyes Litespeed RX 3.5.

Much more later and I'm sure that they will be writing up their stories soon and I'll link to them.  .

Pictures from the day here.

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2012 World Record Encampment

(Zapata, Texas, USA)

record|World Record Encampment 2012

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28376

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2012 World Record Encampment

(Zapata, Texas, USA)

André Wolfe|record|weather|World Record Encampment 2012

You can find today's flights here http://chorlton.homeip.net/spotmap/zapata.html. Glauco stopped yesterday after he had a problem with his VG. It was twisted.  Andre was feeling under the weather.

Glen started soon after 10 AM and Pete around 11 AM. You can follow their flights at the URL above.

Glauco has a brand new Icaro 2000 Laminar that after five flights had the rope twist up the VG. The rope continues to do this as there is a problem with its design.  The rope sheathing is twisting around the core.  He couldn't pull on the VG yesterday.  He skipped today and will go tomorrow.

Andre Wolf is heading back to Brazil.  He doesn't feel well.  There are two open spots available for next week at the WRE.  If the weather looks good, come on down.

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2012 World Record Encampment

(Zapata, Texas, USA)

Belinda Boulter|dust devil|Dustin Martin|Jon "Jonny" Durand jnr|Lawrence "Pete" Lehmann|Mike Degtoff|Pete Lehmann|record|Robin Hamilton|World Record Encampment 2012

http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/para/flightinfo.html?dsId=2532177

We were all counting on Tuesday to be the day, after letting the sun and winds on Monday dry out the course line up the state after the rain on Saturday.  While there had been over running cu's earlier in the morning (well before sunrise), there were only a few wisps near the airport at 9 AM. They were getting more numerous and thicker but it wasn't a completely inviting sky.

Dustin wasn't put off and was the first to get his glider and harness out to the run way.  Jonny, Glen and Glauco followed up with Pete Lehmann and I bringing up the rear.  Pete and I wanted to take a bit later launch than the others so as to better stay up in the first part of the flight.  With strong winds and a record length of 205 miles for the single surface record, I didn't need to go early and risk going down early.

Dustin launched at around 10 AM and Jonny ten minutes later.  Glen then Glauco launched with Pete right behind him.  I found a problem with my PTT cables and had to replace them, so that delayed me till 11:15 AM. Everyone was on the same frequency so we could hear from Dustin and Jonny in the lead were saying.

The sky supported additional cu's so it looked good for Pete and I. Russell was towing me to the east northeast and trying to get me to 3,600' MSL and far to the east when my weaklink broke and I was at 2,200' AGL and not as far east as I would like to make it around the Laredo airspace.  The wind was 21 mph at 151 degrees, putting me right toward the airspace.

Jonny and Dustin were doing well ahead of me and Glen was staying well to the east.  This was Glen's second flight here and the first past the San Ygnacio road only 9 miles out.  I could hear all the progress until the antenna pulled out from my radio about two hours into the flight.

I was struggling to make sure I stayed up, as I started low, as I didn't want to have Belinda have to come out and find me behind a locked gate.  Fortunately with the wind I was quickly to the first paved road and found light lift even as I headed too much to the west.

I wasn't getting high nor to cloud base that was around 4,000' MSL (3,600' AGL). I was down to 1,200' AGL a couple of times out in difficult to retrieve territory, but the cu's were working and I just continued to work light lift.  I needed strong lift to be able to get further east.

Down low just before the east west highway 359 on the south side of Laredo I found 300+ fpm and then was able to jump east to get around the airspace.  I nicked it a bit on the northeast side as the thermal I got there drifted me closer to it.

It took me a total of two hours to get past Laredo.  I was circling up over the UniRoyal test track, something that I had never done before.  Usually I am way to the east of this area.  Heading north northwest I wasn't able to get to the intersection of I35 and highway 83, a typical spot for us and had to take thermals and cu's to the west of highway 83.

The lift was better now and the cloud base was rising.  I was getting to 5,000' AGL and staying five to ten kilometers west of highway 83 which went off to the north northwest to Catarina.

I kept trying to work my way to the east to get up on highway 83, which I could see easily enough, but I just couldn't get there.  It didn't matter as much as there was a huge amount of oil fracking activity and lots of new roads west of highway 83. There were new wells going up every where.  Robin Hamilton estimated that there would be 30,000 new fracking oil wells between Laredo and San Antonio in a decade.  It sure looked like they had a good start on that.

Pushing to the east I got low again, down to 800' and thought I would be landing.  The wind was 20 mph.  I got over a good spot that had landing options downwind and wasn't just covered with Mesquite trees.  I found a little bit of lift there and worked it and drifted fast with the wind out of the southeast at 144 degrees.

I got back up to 4,000' AGL in that one but drifted west of Catarina and crossed the highway (which turns west) between Asherton and Carrizo Springs.  These towns are full of oil patch workers.  I climbed to 6,500' just east of Carrizo Springs, but the winds were taking me across the course line and west of 83 as it turns back north toward Crystal City.

Ten kilometers west of the highway I was struggling to stay headed for Camp Wood and highway 55 coming west and north out of Uvalde.  I wanted to be able to stay close to that highway while I worked the rocks up in the hill country up to Rocksprings and the Edwards Plateau.

There was plenty of lift and lots of cu's but I had to keep pushing east to go north.  The wind was 22 mph at 149 degrees and the Falcon was having a tough time going cross wind.

I passed La Pryor eight kilometers to its west out in difficult retrieval land and climbed back to 6,000' AGL.  I headed north and saw a nice paved road ahead as I headed for a dark cu. Every cu that I had worked has worked for me. I sometimes had to search around maybe for a couple of kilometers to find the core, but it was always there.  I came to the center of this one and sure enough there it was.  But in this case it was wicked, like a dust devil.

I was averaging 600 fpm, but I was getting beat up pretty bad at 2,000' AGL as I was tossed around in the control frame.  After three minutes of that I headed out to find hopefully smoother lift under a wisp downwind to the northwest.

I didn't find the lift this time and was now far away from the paved road, which didn't have a suitable landing area near it anyway.  At the last moment I saw a tractor disking the field ahead and headed for it landing next to the abandoned farm house.

Turns out I had landed on the Flying W Ranch, 330,000 acres with limited access.  Fortunately I got a ride out with a diesel truck that had come to fuel up the tractor.  Belinda was waiting at the gate.

About 160 miles, forty five short of my single surface record.  Landed way early.  I'm hoping for a little less wind on Thursday.

Glen went down over 230 miles out north of Rocksprings.  It took Mike Degtoff a while to chase him down on some back roads, but he was ready to go this morning.

While I was fighting the winds, Pete Lehmann was heading downwind and hoping to just ride them up onto the Edwards Plateau to the west of our normal course line.  That worked out until he found an area of over development and a shaded out landscape up on the plateau that put him on the ground.  David was there about an hour and a half later.  He's was in the air going for in on Wednesday.

Looks like both Pete and Glen have stopped.

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2012 World Record Encampment

(Zapata, Texas, USA)

Dustin Martin|Facebook|Jon "Jonny" Durand jnr|record|video|World Record Encampment 2012

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10100896365298647.2707848.9625066&type=3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjqcp7z_i4U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzfuFm2gQq4

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2012 Chelan Cross Country Classic

(Chelan Butte, WA, USA)

Ben Dunn|Chelan XC Classic 2012

Too windy on Tuesday to fly (thanks to Ben Dunn):

>

Pictures here.

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