Wednesday, October 08, 2008

This One's for Joey

Just a short recap of a really nice downrange mission on Sunday, October 5th. Many pilots had opted to head for Makapu'u first, but the conditions there seemed a bit strong and easterly. There were a couple reports of pilots hitting the beach there, so I opted to head toward Kahana. After a short time I was joined out there by Scot, Joey, Mauri, RT, and Reaper with a tandem passenger.

We all got out of high launch, and found plenty of lift around. After a light rain squall passed through, Scot made the first foray toward the distant lands downrange. We had been chattering on the radio about heading there before the rain came through. I followed suit and then Joey came along.

We had a great cruise - due to the easterly flow there was a lot more ridge lift on the Punalu'u ridge than normal. The winds were strong downrange so we decided to go land at Hau'ula Beach park, rather than pushing for Pounders. A big Mahalo to RT and Alex for the transport back to the LZ, and to Mauri for the fine selection of postflight refreshments. Nice job to Mauri on her first high flight that day too.

3 comments:

Alex said...

Thanks for the recap, Jim. What a tough day that was to call. Strong and east at Makapuu, perfect and not too east at Kahana (although a bit strong for the outlanders), then growing too light at Kahana (man, do I know how light it was), and perfect at Makapuu at the end of the day (when Scrappy was out there).

Gravity said...

Hey One-eye,
Any pic's of Mauri???

Anonymous said...

Thanks One-eye! We got a great XC and couldnt ask for better conditions. Great thermal training and some serious high-wind landing practice...watch out for those palm trees, they aren't too friendly to our wings!