Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Rat Racers Return and the Flying Comes Back

It just cannot be believed that the day Sidehill announces his return to this beautiful island of ours, the winds transition from a whole two months of blown out conditions into one of those pristine Makapu'u days that we all love so much. The pilots held captive on this wind blown island have been going crazy. Jorge has only done one or two tandems in the past two months, Frank has needed the Zion for the new era of low in the bowl days, our new pilots have been totally grounded, and I have literally been grounded for over a month staring up at the inviting cliffs of Makapu'u from my office window. Torture I tell you, torture.

Getting into the air with a 8-10 mph breeze was sweet relief. I helped Jorge and his tandem passenger launch first and then followed after eating about 50 tiny tomatoes from the bushes growing around tomato juice. With this surge of energy I launched into the air and made my way up to ridge height and over to three poles. It was great fun as Goto was swooping around on his hang glider and Jorge and his passenger flew with me. As I got higher the wind continued to back off until there were not too many white caps out over the ocean and the wind seemed to be blowing up the cliffs around the corner from the lighthouse. I, and then Frank, attempted to cross to the lighthouse, but we found we needed to get to the offshore cliffs to have a chance of staying up.

Benched up near hang launch, and then on 80% bar, made a wide crossing, coming in above the lighthouse on the offshore side, and found the lift band. It was a first for me to soar the length of the cliffs to the right of the lighthouse, and it felt like I could have made Sandy Beach on glide, as the wind was onshore there as well. Got up high at the lighthouse and took a course towards Rabbit Island with hopes of tagging it, but tagged the rocks outside of the smaller island instead. On my way, burned off my altitude with a few maneuvers and headed in to celebrate with Frank, Goto, and a few others. Overall, great to get back in the air, and I now remember how much I miss flying.

Thank goodness that the RR Crew is back on island, I could not stand it any longer to be grounded while tasks were being completed in the mountain thermals of Oregon.

8 comments:

JK said...

I might add that yesterday, the day after I left OR, it rained so hard in Medford/Jacksonville, it brought trees down. We were lucky with the weather... lucky indeed. May that luck hold and carry over to home.

allanc said...

@JK - may you lucky monkey tribe bring your great weather back here to stay. Looking forward to flying with all the new comp pilots here in Hawaii. Will need to set up some tasks and try and see if we can start doing some of them. We could even start up our own little xc league or something.

DaveZ said...

Thanks for the morning coffee read Allan. Just what I needed after getting skunked at the Dumps yesterday, waiting hours for some forecasted wind that never showed up. Man I miss Hawaii. Cheers.

allanc said...

@Dave - I am excited that you got some enjoyment out of our little flying site here in the middle of the ocean. Hope to fly with you again soon here. Been practicing some maneuvers and would much rather crash into our ocean here than your ocean at Pacifica. Thank goodness for warm tropical water.

JK said...

Alan, YES! We've been talking about an Oahu XC League. I haven't figured it out yet, but probably via Leonardo. Also, we need to create a database of way points for Oahu, like they have for Woodrat. I've got a good start on that already. We need a new tab on our web site, perhaps....

Thom said...

JK that would be awesome, I just got a B1 and would love to steal everyones way points.

Lets work on that.

allanc said...

@JK - I like the excitement that you are showing towards starting up some type of Oahu XC League and making our way-points available for all pilots on the website.

It sounds like everyone is getting a B1 these days. Has it been decided that the B1 is much better than the 6015? I have been flying without any instruments after my GPS died. Will have to get some type of GPS soon, vario to follow.

Waianae Jim said...

Alex has lots of WayPoints marked and recorded. I don't have too many but will send the ones I have to Thom via email, since I don't have JKs contact info.