I haven’t flown for a couple of weeks , mostly due to weather. After 10 months of drought we now have daily downpours. Yesterday morning, I was met with 6 inches of standing water at the Peachtree LZ. The thermals would have been popping within an hour, so there wasn’t time to try Placida. I had to drive home unsatisfied. No big deal just a No Fly Day.
Placida is 20 minutes farther away but the surface has good drainage and the asphalt has just been resurfaced. It’s a wonderful place to fly , a couple sections of mowed fields and miles of fresh runways that point in every direction. It just doesn’t get any better. If you want to do a cross country, the Gaspirilla causeway is a couple of miles to the west. From there you can follow the beach for miles down Gaspirilla Island or go North up to Englewood.
I launched just after sunrise, right down the runway into 6 mph of wind. The air was mildly bumpy with wispy little clouds at 1000 feet. I could feel the moisture being pulled from the surface as the sun started cooking. A haze developed between the surface and 500 feet within 5 minutes of launch. Among the building cumulus clouds there were a few tall structures that looked like albino man-o-war jellyfish, the tendrils of virga hanging down. Twenty-five minutes was enough to scratch my itch and the air was starting to get rowdy so I decided to land before it got a little too thrilling. Good call, I flew through sinking air on final and dropped from 40 to 5 feet in a heartbeat. With brake and throttle I leveled out and floated two feet above the surface, right up to the truck. Sweet!
Powered Paragliding. A most Personal form of Flight 