Tag: soaring

Flying Home

I flew my plane for the first time since my catastrophic hangliding accident 9 months ago… here’s a 3 minute video showing takeoff, some highlights of the flight, and my landing.

First Flight of Spring Soaring Season 2010

Video of Today’s Flight In My Sailplane: 2 1/2 minute video of a flight today in my sailplane… assembled from short clips I shot from my iPhone in flight…. neat view of space mountain about 35 seconds into the video… apologies for the dorky audio… I had no idea how much I talk to myself when flying, lol.

Bye-Bye Grob, Hello DG-300

DG-300
Well, it was painful but I sold my G-102 to a fellow pilot in Clermont, and upgraded to a new DG-300 Elan. I’ve made some upgrades (all new Cambridge Avionics), and have a few more in mind (gear warning indicator, winglets, and maybe more depending on the budget. I’ve got my eye on setting some altitude, distance, and speed records for Florida this spring.

Just like my Grob, I could not find a DG-300 polar for WinPilot, so i made my own. Feel free to download the polar here: DG-300.plr. This is not an official polar, use at your own risk (i.e. don’t blame me if you fly into a mountain or land out in a swamp.)

More about the DG-300 Elan at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DG-300
I’ve got to get myself a scale model of it from here.

Too bad my landing sucked ’cause I’m so exhausted… and hard to feel the joy I should have when Sixouie and Leo are gone.

Twice the Fun

Sport 2 135
Sport 2 135
Twice the fun! I traded up from a single surface Falcon 2 170 and now am flying a dual surface Sport 2 135. She’s a feisty little thing, but I’m getting used to her. You won’t catch me giving up flying my sailplane, though!

Soaring Adventures

Grob 102
Grob 102
Woot! I went on a long long LONG cross-country Saturday… So long I ended up landing out on the way back, about 20 miles north of homebase. I still broke 100 miles, though! Woot!

Many thanks to the folks at Skyranch (I nice little grass strip that isn’t even on the sectional charts) for the use of a phone, a BIG bottle of gatorade, and letting me drool over their Stearman!

Best of luck to the alligator that made me land with a tail wind back at base. I hope you made it back to your own pond, big guy!

Note to self: next time pull out the camera, ya big dolt!

A Dream Come True!

Grob 102
Grob 102
The happiest day of my life: After more than 10 years of waiting and longing, at long last I have my own plane. She’s a Grob 102 Standard Astir II, a standard class racing sailplane with goodies like retractable gear, water ballast, audio variometer, radio, etc. I flew her two hours on my maiden flight, andI hope to fly her in my first soaring competition over the Thanksgiving weekend