Georgia

I was up early tossing things into the truck so I could meet Paul and Lauren at Quest Air. The tugs at Wallaby were "parked" at 1500 feet, so the forecast for strong wind in the morning was right on. Once at Quest I exchanged telephone numbers with Dave who offered to drive before asking where we were going. You should have seen his face when we said "Georgia"!

We were worried when the winds were still shaking the trees at 10:30. It was obvious we wouldn't be starting early so flying a recording-breaking flight unlikely. I saw some lulls in the wind about the time the pilots sitting under the shade tree starting wondering if the day was a total loss. I didn't want to be a part of that "scene" so I just started getting ready to fly. By noon there were nice launch cycles and I pushed out right behind Davis.

Bo towed me dropped me in a weak climb upwind, but it was bittersweet since Davis was beaming to the north up over Groveland. No worries, I was climbing and the rest of the gang were just getting ready to launch. I drifted north searching for any climb while Paul got dropped in a strong climb to the west. I thought I might land north of town but found a broken climb that got me high enough so I could finally reach a good climb and "get into the game".

I hooked up with Paul south of the highway and then Paris and Mitch showed up. We shared a couple of climbs before Paris left us in the dust. Paul, Mitch, and I spent most of the day within sight of each other. Paul and Mitch got away from me south of Ocala when I had trouble unzipping to "dump ballast". I eventually caught up several climbs north of town over some large lakes.

Lauren, who was hoping to break the Florida women's record, couldn't get away from the field. She graciously agreed to take over Dave's duties and headed out with the truck.

The radio conversation was funny. Davis was the only pilot in the group had been in that area before. He and Belinda were constantly guiding their little goslings and answering questions like "Do I follow the 2 lane road to the northeast or the train tracks to the north?", "Can I go west of that big lake and still be out the airspace?", or "Did you go north or northwest at the at that little town?". We had very little of the normal "do you have something other there" type of conversation.

I really enjoyed the trip since I was flying over new territory. It was the first time I flew east of Gainsville. There were picturesque horse farms and of course lakes. We flew right over the runway where John Travolta keeps his flying toys.

Further north, Davis told us to not drift any further east since we were approaching restricted airspace around Jacksonville. I pushed further west to follow a little string of pearls popping up in the blue while Paul glided more northerly to a climb that Mitch was just finishing. Paul announced he had is first 100 mile flight in a flex wing. Paris announced he had his first flight to Georgia. Paul and I made a smooth cruised over a large prison, but I had an extra 2000 feet on him. Paul made a last-ditch search over a huge landfill he called "Mount Trashmore" while I pushed a little further north and found a climb while Paul was forced to land. Bummer.

The rest of the gang were getting further ahead as I tip-toed through a large expanse of pine plantations. Lots of trees, few LZs, no clouds, and little altitude. I thought the day was dying when I cruised over highway 10. I picked out a small construction site as my LZ. Mitch relayed my position to Belinda and Lauren. I didn't like my intended LZ so when I stumbled into light lift I started turning. That little climb progressively got better and I was soon at cloud base again.

About that time Belinda got on the radio and said that Davis had landed since his radio died. He was concerned that retrieval would be a pain if pilots continued on over the pine plantations that do not have cell phone coverage. He wanted everyone to land where he did to make pickup easy. I was about 12 miles away but had an easy glide at cloud base along a sea-breeze convergence line. I could see the Jacksonville skyline to my left. Paris gave me good visual landmarks while he circled down that led me right to the field. Davis certainly picked an interesting field to land in. Check out the picture for the image that greeted us. We had flown into Georgia but had landed back in Florida.

Paul and Lauren showed up before we finished packing. (Thanks very much Lauren for driving all the way to Georgia and being such a good sport about it). We all stopped for dinner and made it back to Quest a little after 11pm; not bad for a flight to Georgia.

Total distance 139 miles, airtime 5:45.