Robert conquers the wind!
Well, a fantastically beautiful day at the old sod farm, and our small but enthusiastic crew took full advantage: Robert, John, Rich, Larry, Bob W., and Jan, plus me, were all there at one time or another.
On the ground, the wind-meter measured gusts to 13 and maybe higher occasionally. Up in the air, the wind was blowing hard enough so that it your plane would just barely move against it when trying to come back from downwind.
Everybody who flew got beaten to the ground a few times by the wind, the gusts, and the sink But there were some great climb-outs too, and most of those were produced by Robert’s excellent downwind flying.
The trick was to get a really good launch, head downwind, search if you could, and try to climb out before you got too far away and had to limp home. Robert proved to be the master of this scheme, and climbed to prodigious altitudes several times. On one flight, my altitude logger registered 1100, and yet Robert was at least 500 feet above me, probably more.
Rich proved that his Ava could fly quite well in the windy conditions, and Jan made a nice flight with his Bird of Time in one of the relatively calm moments.
The whole day is made so much more enjoyable by John’s wonderful rolling winch/retriever trailer setup. It’s a marvel of engineering and construction. Thanks, John.
Anyway, a terrific day, and this good weather is expected to last for several more days. Get out there and fly!