Tuesday, October 08, 2013

Welcome! Willkommen! Добре дошли!

Welcome to Germans Markus and Tanja, Bay Areans Ulf and Sergei, Seattlites Motorhead Paul (not so much a visitor as an exiled local emeritus) and Wayne, BC Mike, Bulgarians Veso, Petar, Stefan, Ivan, and Ivan, and Woodrat Sam. Winter has arrived, and our visitor season has kicked into high gear. Over a dozen visitors are in town right now, with more to come very soon. Let's welcome them to share our sites and skies, and help them figure out how the flying works here! It means a little bit of work for us to offer site introductions and other assistance, but in the end we learn a lot from our visitors and we enjoy their cold beverages.

The Red Bull-garian pilots are camping at Malaekahana. One of my favorite landing zones! They are here for three weeks working on a Red Bull film. They are expecting reinforcements soon from Brazil and Austria. Red Bull pilots Veso and Petar are among the world's best acro pilots, and today they put on impromptu acro shows at Kahana and Makapuu. It was awe-inspiring. I've never seen synchronized infinite tumbles before today, but I hope to see more of them!

The forecast called for light to moderate winds. And um, that was wrong. It was quite strong most of the day. And the forecast called for frequent showers and thunderstorms. Yeah, that was wrong too. It was sunny and beautiful! Bay Area Sergei made the best call yesterday when he texted me that today would be good. Thanks, dude!

It was good for acro pilots in the morning and good for normal pilots in the late afternoon: at the end of the day we were scratching in light lift at Kahana while pilots were sitting out the strong stuff at Makapuu. It was strong enough most of the day that the poor Bulgarians had to fly awesome acro flights by themselves at Kahana and at Makapuu. We told them it was not one of our good days, and now they're really excited. Veso said the flying here is like kindergarten. I guess we were all waiting for preschool conditions.

All I can say is: welcome to Hawaii. The forecast for the rest of the week sounds pretty grim, strong and wet, but here's hoping that's just as wrong as it was today!

Kahana Roll call: Veso, Petar, Stefan, Sam, me, Woody, Ivan, Ivan, Sergei, Kaaawa Larry, Steve.

Makapuu roll call: Thom, Paul, Wayne, Veso, Petar, Stefan, Sam, Ivan, Ivan, Sergei, Joey, JK, Frank, Goto, etc, etc.

2 comments:

sandy said...

Helmets, real back-protection, easily reached hook-knives -- these folks came prepared for serious fun! Hope the weather gods are good to them and they get to throw down plenty joyful moves.

(and for extra safety credit: noseguards and brightly colored shorts! it is Hawaii after all)

Alex said...

Don't worry, it's well known that Hawaii standards of safety are high. Very high. Might have to sit in on a meeting myself one of these days. :-)