By Jeff Struthers,
It was a windy, but beautiful, day to be outside on Saturday. At 8:00 a.m. the sun was peeking out of a broken cloud layer to the east. We had blue sky above the flying field and no marine layer!
The wind, however, would prove a challenge. At 9:00, Lindbergh Field was reporting westerly winds of 9 mph. By the first launch at 9:30, the westerly wind felt stronger and was straight down our runway. Eight pilots took to the sky with seven Radian’s and one Easy Star. All were quickly batted down by the wind, with the Lucky Dog winner at 1min. 10sec. The longest flight was 2:14. Bob Stinson was the only pilot to score a bonus landing of 20 points.
On the second launch the wind slackened a bit, with pilots powering hard and straight to a good altitude. Bob Stinson, Scott Vance, Dennis La Berge and Vince Gonsowski were able to make the altitude pay off with times above 4 min. Dennis found some lift with a round winning time of 7:30. The landings were better too, with Bob, Vince, and Scott all scoring an extra 30 points. Rich Rogers picked up a landing of 20 points.
For the third launch, the wind had picked up causing flight times to drop below 4 minutes. Ground turbulence was starting to be a problem as well, causing two off-field landings. Still, Rich and Jon Graber picked up 30 points on their landings. Scott picked up a 10 point landing.
The fourth and final launch had the same tough and windy conditions. Flight times were all below 4 minutes with only Vince scoring a landing bonus of 10 points. There was one off field landing.
Winners for the day: 1st place was Vince Gonsowski with 121 points. 2nd place was Bob Stinson with 116 points and third place was Rich Rogers at 113 points.
Thoughts for this tough day: The windy conditions pushed all pilots to fly their best. Landings were a pain and forced pilots to fly ahead of their airplanes to even make the field. Congrats to all of you who managed to get bonus landing points… that was hard.
We can’t do much about the weather, but we can develop our skills to handle the situations we get into. You all showed great piloting skills on Saturday and it was fun to watch it.
Next Electroglide June 18th.
Jeff
