There has been a dry spell of epic flying since the departure of our President. We've only seen a few short posts on the chatter box to say who flew, where and how low they had to stay, mostly from the Makapuu Gang. During my last session at Makapuu everyone was on small wings, while I was dressed to go somewhere. Well, that flight was about 20 minutes, 19 of which were trying to land at the LZ.My affliction may not be as bad as Alex's but my family knows when I have not flown for awhile, even they start praying for flyable weather. Duck and Ginger came back today and I volunteered to pick them up, mostly so I would at least drive through Kahana.
It took hours to get to the Mallard residence due to a big function at Kualoa Ranch. They gotta do something about that traffic. The wind was blowing hard at Kahana as we passed but at least it was sunny for the campers.
As I drove away from Duck's it was looking a little better, Woody called and at the same time Duck text me the PUN sensor numbers. 10-14 (mph) at 68 (degrees). We had 4 good reads so Woody and I hiked up East.
A little strongish on launch but doable. We wobbled around for an hour plus in the lumpy air, I watched Woody do some touch and goes, then he helped me try to improve my wing overs, then need a lot a work.
Flying towards the Rhino I could see Woody's shadow mimicking my peels to the rhino. Then he pushed out front and I tried to follow his moves from just above him. We had a blast just 2 Freestyle wings, same color, same size, same orange jacket and same moves (well not so much, but I am working on it).
After we landed with big old grins, I told Woody that we gotta do this more often, it is just helping my flying, I need to get better wing control and that is why I bought the FreeStyle. He said we were like mirrors up there today. On the way home I thought, "Yeah, sure we were, Woody was the real image while I was some rendition of a misshapen fun house reflection." I did improve today, but I need to do it more often, we all do actually. Some good articles in the last Cross Country reminds us that we all need to keep doing the basics over and over.
2 comments:
FYI it was a short window, so did not call to arms, you had to be there right then cause it was over after an hour, landing in strongish easterly flow at the lz.
Thanks for the story, Thom. I know things are sleepy around there with so many people exiled or out of town right now but it's nice to know there are a few pilots there to keep the home fires burning.
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