Monday, January 10, 2005

Day Five

We had a pilots meeting yesterday afternoon to discuss the accidents in the tow paddock. There was a discussion about the availability of medical help. Some pilots wanted more, but the current coverage seemed reasonable to me. I thought it was more important to prevent accidents by towing INTO the wind. The discussion finally turned to that topic and I felt better. However, the meet directors are forcing us to use their weak links. They are rated about 1/2 the strength of what I currently use. (Wallaby / Quest style links). That makes me a little nervous since a weak link break close to the ground can hurt. The unspoken problem here is that a lot of the pilots don't know how to aero-tow. I suspect we will see more accidents; hopefully no more injuries.

There was a nice ceremony at the crash site at sunset last night. It would have been a beautiful evening if the reason for the gathering was different.

I finally decided to disassemble my glider and retune it from scratch. I am a little nervous about flying today. The glider "looks right" to my eye, but it is significantly different from the configuration I got from the factory. Oleg and Ollie looked it over and gave me some of the suggestions that implemented. I applied for the early "pre-launch" today. If the glider is pure trash to fly (wicked right turn), I might have time to land and make some more adjustments before the launch and start windows close.

I have some pictures of Hay that I will try to post on the next non-flying day.

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