By Scott Vance
This month’s Electroglide found us flying in overcast skies and light wind from the west with a temperature of 70 degrees. No one was expecting any lift in the usual spots, boy were we all surprised.
First launch at 09:30 found 6 Radians and one Easy Star climbing out to the west. To our great surprise, 3 pilots found lift and plenty of it. Roger Ball came in at first place with a 9:45 with a 10 point landing. I came in with a 9:40 and a 20 point landing. Tom Erickson came in third with a 9:15 and a 20 point landing. Rich picked up the lucky dog and a 20 point landing for 48 points.
The second launch had 5 Radians and one Easy Star heading to the west looking for lift. Fred had to drop out do to aircraft issues. Flight times were shorter, lift was harder to find. Roger came in first again with a 6:36 and a 10 point landing. I came in a 6:32 also with a 10 point landing. Tom came in at 6:09 with a 20 point landing. Jon Graber captured the lucky dog and a 10 point landing for 58 points.
Launch number three had 6 Radians as Dennis LaBerg joined the party late. The wind picked up to 4-5 mph and the lift was there out to the west. At the eight minute mark, 4 pilots were high to the west and slowly began to head toward the field. As the clock counted down to the 9:45 mark, pilots were beginning to make their move and things got crowded around the landing circle. Roger got down at 9:56; I got down at 9:52. George Sullivan and Dennis missed the time limit and landed after the 10 minute buzzer. In our scramble to get down, landing points went out the window as none of the high timers had any landing points. Jon Graber captured the lucky dog and a 10 point landing for 36 points.
The fourth launch found flight times typical for an overcast day with minimal lift to be found. I had the longest flight with a 4:40. Roger came in with a 4:27 and 20 landing points. Tom came in with a 4:20 to round out the top 3. Jon Graber captured the lucky dog again for 16 points.
Winners for the day: Roger Ball with a total of 220 points, I had 216 points and Tom came in third with 179 points. Jon Graber flying in the Easy Star class had 140 points with 3 lucky dog landings.
Jeff should be back next month to resume control of Electroglide, hope to see a bigger crowd of pilots next month. The September Electroglide will take place on the 16th.
