Dillingham Delivers

Another nine days of howling tradewinds came to an abrupt end last night, as the interminable high pressure was finally nudged away by an intrepid Alaskan low. (Thanks Jack!) I heard the guys were planning on flying the lighthouse ridge at Makapuu, but somehow I got the crazy idea to head in the opposite direction, to investigate the possibility of soaring Dillingham. And somehow I convinced Ray and Jon to join me out there. We don't know much about how that place works, but I figure it's always worth some more research.

The forecast had described the light southeast airflow that caused us to be drenched by the Big Island moisture plume last night, and it also said sea breezes would determine the local airflow today. Most sensors were reporting a light north breeze in the morning, including the one at Dillingham. I drove out there and was happy to find sunny blue skies, but I was disappointed to find very little wind at all. The sensor was now reporting a halfhearted two miles per hour.

My faithful friends Ray and Jon soon showed up, and we managed to convince each other to hike up despite our worries about the lack of wind. After about 45 grueling minutes and a thousand vertical feet, we reached the top, where the cycles still seemed quite light, barely enough to convince us to give it a shot. We figured we'd be lucky to get sledders, but at least it was a beautiful day for it. By this time we were hearing reports of some watery misadventures at Makapuu, and we were hoping to avoid any misadventures of our own at this very committing launch site.

We sent Jon off first, and on his second attempt at a forward launch he made it into the air, startling a tow plane into an early release of his glider. But instead of sledding down, Jon actually started to go up, and after a couple of passes he was quite a ways above launch. Ray and I let out a cheer of happy surprise. The ocean was starting to show a smooth uniform texture, and our hopes were raised for good soaring conditions. Ray went next, ripping his wing into the air reversed, then spinning and hesitating a moment before loading up his wing and running off the cliff into the abyss. He easily followed Jon up and above launch as I laid my wing out to join them. I quickly executed what I thought was a serviceable dynamic reverse launch, and soon found myself rising in smooth lift in front of the ridge.

What a crazy place: our other mile-long thousand-foot-high ridge soaring site! This one has more interesting air traffic though: instead of the usual hang gliders and tour copters, here we have to watch out for sailplanes and their tugs, ultralight hang glider trikes, and skydive planes (not to mention skydivers). Then there's the air force radar array at Kaena point, which we've been told will microwave our gonads if we fly near them during space shuttle missions. That didn't seem to bother Ray - this was his first good day flying this site after several previous attempts, and he was thoroughly enjoying himself, running the length of the ridge all the way to the point and back, then out over Peacock Flats where the clouds started to get thick on the way to Mount Kaala. The three of us boated around happily in the smoothest of lift, a couple of thousand feet up most of the time, surfing above the orographic clouds that were forming below us on the ridges.

After a glorious hour and a half in the air, we saw a line of low clouds approaching from the ocean, and we decided to land before they arrived. The wind was starting to pick up too, and we found ourselves descending into some pretty turbulent air above our traditional landing area next to the old hangar. We all landed okay, but that was some of the worst swirling air I can ever remember landing in. Ray got a nice 30 percent whack about 20 feet off the tarmac, but managed to maintain his heading and land on his feet. That was a stressful way to end a very mellow flight. But apparently we had stumbled onto the perfect window of conditions for the day. There were kitesurfers launching at the beach as we left!

We celebrated our good fortune with brews and pupus at Jamieson's in Haleiwa before heading our separate ways to join our families for dinner. Thanks to Ray and Jon for their faith in my crazy idea today! I look forward to conducting more research out there.

Winter Solstice

Six hardy pilots braved strong conditions and numerous passing squalls to fly Kahana on the shortest day of the year: Annelies, Brian, Czech Peter, McStalker, Summer, and me. Czech Peter hiked and flew three times, and Brian hiked and flew twice. These Jackson Hole pilots love to hike! One-eye Jim was there too, checking out the conditions (and judging them too strong for his current recuperation level). Ginny came out to do some kiting, and Brazilian Ray stopped by with his family. The flying wasn't epic but after a month of nuking winds we're just happy to be flying, at least until the trades crank back up again on Sunday.

Flyable

Many souls on the island have suffered for a month or more without flying, and we are desperate for airtime. Annelies and I waited all day on launch for the wind to back down and for the squalls to back off. I flew a couple of times in brief windows of flyability, but it was definitely on the marginal side - to end my second brief flight, I fought my way down through the smoking lift to land at low launch, but thought better of relaunching and hiked down with Annelies, and also Czech Peter, One-eye and McStalker, who had optimistically joined us at low launch. Maybe tomorrow will be better...