April Fool

I left Massachusetts at 4 am Monday April 1st.  Since it was April Fool's Day I wondered if the joke was on me as the 20-hour drive slowly rolled by until I arrived at Wallaby Ranch in Florida at midnight.

The welcome sounds of tugs coaxed me out of the tent into the bright sunshine the next morning.  After many greetings, unloading Nate's, Peter's, and Rob's gliders, and a not-so-quick breakfast, I sauntered over to the Wills Wing trailer to find the new toy with my name on it.  Larry invited me to join Davis and Mitch on a trip around the Green Swamp, but I wasn't mentally or physically ready for anything demanding.  Instead I took my time fondling my new T2C 136 and preparing a late afternoon flight.  Steve Pearson and the sky full of cumulus convinced me ditch the plan and just go fly.

Launch went great and we passed through a thermal at the west end of the main field.  The tug pilot whipped a quick 360 and we passed through it again.  Good enough for me so I released.  Only when I glanced at my flight computer did I realized I released at 500 feet (150m).  Oops.  Not only that, I was right on the flight path from launch.  Crap.  I quickly snapped into survival mode and slowly got up and out of the way of everyone else before shifting to a nice climb to base.

I announced on the radio that cloud base was 6000 feet (1800m), the wind was east, and that I was just west of Wallaby Ranch.  A few seconds later someone came on the radio and announced very calmly they were in orbit a some ridiculous altitude and approaching the shore of Indonesia.  I chuckled thinking someone was making fun of me.  However, the operator then continued on with other flight information and invited other radio operators to contact them.  Somehow, Tyson suggested a radio frequency used to communicate with the space station.  Sigh.  (I later found out from Mike that I was listening to a recording of a previous session broadcasted by an operator in Jacksonville.)  Needless to say, my radio conversations for the day were difficult.

I synced up with Jason and Ken and took a easy glide north to another good climb.  Jason wanted to know if anyone wanted to head off for an adventure.  As usual, I'm easy and was soon heading northwest for an out-and-back to Groveland without any retrieve.

Jason

It was easy going until we ran into a huge blue hole north of Seminole-Lake Gliderport.  Jason got low and turned around.  I continued on until I had to choose to land at QuestAir or retreat to clouds to the south.

Since we didn't have a retrieve, I turned around, worked several slow climbs, and was back to base as I watched Jason landed along route 574.  It was now up to me to get back and drive retrieve.  The only problem was I got low over the sand mines and was struggling to find climbs.

Patience paid off and the heat from the bare sand eventually lifted me back to base and an easy glide to the ranch.

I used my altitude to explore the trim, turn, and stall behavior of the new glider before pulling off a nice spot landing next to the road.

It was very nice playing in the air again.  Winter was much too long.

Flights: 1, Duration: 3:27, Distance: 35 miles