Monarca 2011–Task 2 63 Km

Launch – Piano – Laguna – Quintalia – Iglesi – LaCasa – Iglesi – Torre

Results are posted here http://www.monarcaparaglidingopen.com/files/Task_2_02_01_2011.pdf

A no flying day for me today so little to write about from a personal flying perspective, so I have to report what folks told me.  I am feeling much better after my incident yesterday and I will be flying tomorrow. Really looking forward to it.

So today I first went down to check out my wing was okay. It was stored at Alas des Hombres. All was well. No holes or damage so I was happy. I managed to unpack it and repack so that was good. Walking is fine and sitting is fine but the transition was a little sore early this morning. By afternoon it was much better.

I popped into Alas Des Hombres HQ to have a chat with the folks there. Chifus was having some issues with the scoring application on the computer so I dived in and helped him out. Ended up talking to an English guy in Europe to cobble together a workaround that allowed us to print off the scores and rankings from yesterday which then made it’s way to launch to be posted. My good deed for the day done.

I had breakfast at the café across the street and waited for Doug to come and join me. After that we walked down to the landing area to see how high the water was. That was my first time down there this year and the water level was high. It sure was beautiful.

Headed back up the road to a café where we got internet access and watched the updates on the SPOT application I developed for the Windows phone. It worked a treat!.

Gilead sunk out in a flush cycle from launch, Jeff made it to the first turnpoint and Mer, Dave, Frank and Preacher were all doing good. So I walked back down to the LZ area at the lake to see if they would make goal.

On the way down there I picked up a bottle of Whisky that came with a set of binoculars. I thought that was pretty cool and I could use them to watch from a distance. I sat at the lz and poured myself a shot and pulled out the binoculars. I couldn’t see a damn thing! I was sitting next to JC the launch director and asked him to take a look to see what was wrong. We both laughed our heads off as we discovered that the binoculars were actually a Flask!!! I sure had fun that day passing them around to folks who saw them lying on the table wanting to view the pilots! :-) Even worked well on the Seattle crew too!.

I watched Frank, Dave, Mer and Preacher arrive at goal! Congrats to them. They said the conditions today were much mellower than yesterday but it was a little hard at the beginning getting up high. However once the convergence kicked in it was not a problem. In fact getting down to the LZ was a problem.

From a distance we could all see another reserve toss way up on the mesa and whoever it was was really high. Pilot seemingly was ok.

Doug had walked down to the LZ with his wing and both he and Gilead went up to Torre for a late evening flight which Doug really enjoyed. Doug is set to do that each day instead of going to the Penon.

Well that’s it. Well almost. I forgot about Sparky!. Yes, one of the pilots I know flew into a  live power line  whilst landing today. He was slung shot back when his chest hit the lines while  his wing ended up being draped over the lines. A few sparks and singed lines but all ended up well! Except for the citrus tree that the local farmer was not too happy about!.  One lucky man indeed!