Corn In My Teeth

 Another PERFECT weekend of flying this past weekend. I didn't get through the entire weekend without crashing, but it was a soft crash :-).  Ok Ok, not really a crash at all.  I was taking off up hill, along a tree line, over fences, bixtweenst horses, and through corn. Everything went fine until I got to the "through the corn part".  I just couldn't outclimb the terrain and ended up landing in the middle of a large corn field. I spent the next hour untangling my lines and getting my wing and motor back out to open field.  No damage!  Nice!  I love my SkyBolt II Frame built my Mr. Rob Williams of http://www.skyboltkit.com/. I've hit about everything the fields have to offer and I've never damaged it at all - OR ME! 

Anyway, Rob and Matt and I had a great weekend of flying and bbqing and swimming and perhaps a beer or 9.  We're preparing now to head to Ohio for the annual Flight Junkies Reunion this Thursday through Sunday.  Should make for a great time!

Here are two of my video's from this past weekend.  I have another one of Rob getting airborne that I have to finish editing.  It'll be up soon!  Hope you enjoy the video's.

1.  Huntin Corn

2.  Germansville Ball Diamonds

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Back Up At Rob’s, Part Duex

Went back up to Rob’s today to do some more flying in the great Northeast of Pennsylvania. It’s real purty country up there with lots of neat hills and valleys to fly in.  We launched about 7:15 pm, but I think we should have waited a bit longer because it was still a bit more turbulent than I love to fly in.  Oh well, it builds character, right. 

Rob told me it was going to be a “technical” (he called it) departure. I didn’t know he meant we’d be departing towards the mountain, running up hill, in front of the woods, near a 500 kV power line!  I got airborne, made a left turn out and began my standard slow climb back to the South.  A few minutes later I was up to about 500’ and out of the wires, woods, and wind shear.  The rest of the flight went perfect!

Have a looksie:

Flyin’ up at Rob’s place again. This is a nice country up here!

Launch Zone for Flight 2

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Cross Country Flying

I finally did it!!! I finally “cut the cord” and flew a good distance away from the field and stepped out of my comfort zone flying PPG’s and went somewhere.  Where? 20.02 miles down the way!  I departed Morgantown this morning and pointed Bertha East towards Kolb Field in Phoenixville.  I immediately began wondering if I made the right decision because it was quite a bit bumpy with early morning lifty / sinky air.  I pressed on and 37 minutes later, I landed at Kolb Field. 

I thought for a while about calling for a ride back, but figured I’d better at least try the flight back to Morgantown before throwing in the towel.  On the way out to Morgantown this morning (at 5:00 am), I stopped by Kolb and left a full gas can and set up a wind sock.  I topped off my fuel tank and got airborne again, this time having difficulty gaining altitude due to the “rotor” effect of the wind off the tree line surrounding the field.  I did get airborne and high enough to miss the tree and the lines and began my SLOW 6 mph journey back to Morgantown.  I was headed in to the wind this time and boy it showed. No longer could I enjoy the 40+mph ground speed that I had experienced on the way over.

I flew about 1/3 of the way back to Morgantown before finally accepting the fact that I wouldn’t have enough fuel at this speed to make it back.  I landed in a field across the street from O & J Roberts High School and gave my buddy Matt a call to come get me.  He quickly arrived and back to Morgantown we went.  I’m really happy that I did the cross country and I can’t wait to redo the return trip with more cooperative winds.  Here’s the vid!

My First Real Cross Country PPG Flight. Morgantown to Kolb, 20.02 Miles!

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Campin’ Out In Morgantown

Given most any weekend where the the weather is nice for flying, you’ll find a tent or two set up out in Morgantown PPG Field.  It makes it so much easier to fly until 30 minutes past sunset (with a strobe), and then get up and fly again 30 minutes before the sun peaks back on the other side of the whole wide world.  This really does happen most weekends!

This weekend we must have had 10 wings up and 5 folks staying over night having a swaller of beer after flying and sitting out by the camp fire in the darkness of a night.  Out here in Morgantown, there isn’t any light pollution so you get a GREAT view of the stars so pack a sleeping bag and a tent, and bring a long a telescope;  we’ve got the beer. 

Hope you enjoy the video! 

Lil bit of flying this weekend!

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Miss Maple in the Shade

The last flight of the morning I decided to travel up the way to Shady Maple, which is a humongous buffet joint just West of Morgantown.  This place seats about a bazillion folks and has the best breakfast selection that I've ever seen.  The food bars are about the length of a football field. You there laughing! I'm serious! Fathead!  The place opens up at 5:00 am and you better hurry because I think it closes at 10:00 a.m. and there will be a long line.  The Good Folks out in these parts get up about 3:30 every morning to start their work and somebody's gotta feed them. Do yourself a favor, look up Shady Maple and give 'em a taste test; you'll be real proud you did.    The flying was fun but a bit bumpy as the sun has been out cooking the ground for a while and the convective currents had already begun.  Hope you enjoy the vid.



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Flying Rob's Place

Matt and I headed up to Rob's Place today for a bit of flying around New Tripoli.  This turned out to be an excellent flight with gorgeous scenery and perfect weather.  The area is a bit more technical that I am used to as it's departing uphill, along a tree line, with rapidly rising terrain.  I ended up landing near the top of the hill because some power lines were in the near distance and I didn't want to take a chance on getting caught up in the them.  I looked around a bit after landing an now know that I did have an "out" to the North that allowed for descending terrain.  I'm going back soon so I'll know then!  Here's the vid!

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Happy Independence Day

We're headed down to Hilton Head this Saturday, so I wanted to get a flight in this afternoon so I could feed my airborne craving just before leaving on Holiday.  The picture to the left is Morgantown Airport, in Morgantown PA. This is about 3 miles East of where we fly paragliders out of.  We (PPG) fly in the early morning and late afternoon and the Gliders fly in the middle of the day so we happy co-exist without getting in each other's way.  My flight was fairly early in the morning and I had radio's with me to check on any air traffic in the area before doing my fly over.  Plus I got to see da Walmart from above! 

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