Since I flew 4.5 hours yesterday, I was doing ground operations most of the day. The eastern wave window was open to FL250 (25,000 feet) until 3pm and most folks were able to get all the way up to 25,000.
At one point, Eb and I were the only two Wave Camp participants who hadn't flown yet today, so we the Grob landed we took it up. Here's a shot of Eb flying from the rear seat:
Earlier in the day Eb mentioned that he'll be celebrating 65 years of flying this year!
I flew the takeoff and tow (with lots of fun rotor) and got us to 18,000 feet. Then I gave Eb the glider and he flew for the next couple of hours, exploring the wave. That gave me time to relax, eat the second half of my lunch, take a bunch more pictures, and so on.
The winds were quite strong at altitude. In the picture below, you can see the GPS telling us we had a ground speed of 147 knots! The airspeed indicator is only showing 70knots, so we had one hell of a tailwind going. I have a blurry shot taken 5 seconds later where we're over 150 knots.
After we'd had our fill, Eb gave me the glider and I got us back on the ground. The wind was howling down on the ground, so the pattern and approach were quite interesting. I decided to land on the old taxiway for the closed 21 runway, because it was the safest. Those who saw the landing said it was well done and I was quite happy with it.
What an awesome day!
And there are still five days left of the camp. :-)
Posted by jzawodn at April 12, 2005 09:41 PM
Long time reader, first time commenter.
Congrats on the gliding -- looks like a blast. As a backcountry skier those lines coming off the back side of Tahoe into Mnden look very nice. I've been wanting to ski those for a long time.
Anyway... just wanted to let you know that if you ever want to re-live your gliding trips, you should check out a web service I recently started -- motionbased.com
We break down a varitey of activities (running, cycling, skiing, flying, etc...) into detailed analysis and maping. All you need is a GPS device to record the activity (which you apparently use).
The beauty of making MotionBased a web-based service is that it is very easy to share your activities with your friends and explore those on the TrailNetwork (our database of all activities created by the community). You can learn more from the site or drop me an email.
You'll quickly see that we're more setup for endurance sports, but lots of people are getting into tracking and reviewing their activities. We even have a few people tracking their lawn mowing.
Okay, it's just starting to annoy me that you've piloted higher without an engine than I've flown with one. Darn it. This is jealousy speaking... My one time in a glider was so wonderful that I literally didn't look back, since I knew I couldn't really afford what I knew would be a serious habit. Gliders are mind-readers, unlike little powered planes. But I'm getting plenty of vicarious pleasure from reading your adventures.
