The Portlock Eight

It turned out to be as nice a day as I've had the chance to fly at Koko head, with seven other lucky pilots. Frank made the early effort to hike up while Ginny, Joey and I waited at the bottom to make sure the conditions were good before committing to hike up. Frank made the call from the top, saying it wasn't too strong for my "big" Paratech P44 wing, so off we went. Joey thoroughly enjoyed his first climb up that nice road (not).

When we eventually got up there the wind was a bit strong out on the normal launch, I was wishing I has packed my Apco Lambada. Frank encouraged us to go a bit around the corner and have a look there. It was still too strong, so we all sat it out waiting for the wind to back down a bit.

Reaper showed up with Kui, and Scrappy popped in. It calmed down enough that Joey decided to give it a go, he masterfully demonstrated his "overshoot" method of inflation, then was on an elevator ride pretty straight up. After watching his launch, the rest of us decided to wait a bit longer. Scrappy used the time to load up on rocks for ballast. While we were sitting around up there we met Steve from the UH weather department, and had a nice chat with him.

Our wait, thankfully, was not in vain. The wind backed down nicely, Reaper, Scrappy, and I launched. Frank had headed in to land and go sailing. Tim had made his way up to take some pictures, hope as usual for him he puts up a link to them. Reaper left his camera and Kui with Ginny. Fireman Dave appeared and made a quick launch in his U-Turn, although by his standards the wind was a little light by then for that tiny acro wing, he still put on a show over Portlock throwing some huge wingovers and getting way lower than anyone else, before working his way back up. Rich, Maui Doug, and Harris were making their way up the road, I was giving them some directions to launch from the air, for what would be their first flights at the site.

I had a side-by-side talk with Fireman Dave about trying to jump over to Koko Head (proper) but eventually Dave nixed the idea (probably because he wasn't in his comp glider). Like I said in the air Dave - I'll follow. I finally headed in to land just before Rich, Maui Doug and Harris launched. From what I heard they all had great first flights there (with the exception of Rich's botched launch attempt). If anyone else got some good pictures please share them Four first timers in one day. Great to see everyone out there, let's do it again!!