Month: November 2020

Flight 1045 Sunset

This was a much better take off than this morning. The wind was barely showing a breath 25degrees off the runway. Hardly enough to consider it a crosswind launch. The wing was laid out straight ( without Chevron ) on a clean surface runway. I carefully folded the leading edge trying very hard to get every thing square and flattened so the prop wash wouldn’t catch it. I hate a premature inflation! 😡

So, anyway it came up cleaner and I was able to stay on the road and get up to speed before the road started to curve. I could feel the cart wanting to fly and just before I was about to drive into the rough , I popped a bit of brake and launched cleanly.

The air was buttery and warm. I passed back and forth along the western edges of the development along the nature preserve, watching the sunset. About 5:20 , ten minutes before sunset the winds came up from the NE so I turned back toward the LZ.

Landing was thrilling. I ran into some sink on final and had to add some thrust to hit my mark.a2

Little Boca. And the Gaspirilla Causway.

Flight 1044

Good Flight except that it was another funky take off. The wing came up poorly and I had to waste half the runway getting it settled down. When the road curved I stayed on bearing and accelerated into the grass. It took another 100 feet to launch. Five hundred yards later I overflew a fellow unloading another Trike. It looked like a green eagle.

I flew west and crossed the Gaspirilla Causeways and flew along the beach for awhile before reversing course and returning to “The Meadows”. It took 5 minutes of scanning the area to find the other pilot , he was flying low out over the mangroves. We hooked up and we danced a bit before landing. I didn’t realize it until later but it was not a Green Eagle PPG it was a Legal Eagle PPC. He obviously had a ton of thrust and the big elliptical wing was very maneuverable.

We chatted later, and although we had never met, we did know each other from Facebook. Rob Norland …. well met , I look forward to flying with you in the future.

Flight 1043

It was thin fog between the house and Jobean bridge. On the other side it was thicker and at the field it was thick but patchy. I decided to go for it hoping that the patches would diminish as it warmed up. I set up on a crease road that was wide enough for most of the wing. Unfortunately it was a Funky take off . The wing was all over the place and poorly inflated. I’m not sure if one side was just uninflated or if there was a cravat. Eventually I was able to sort it out but I had used a bunch of my runway and had to finish the run up in the grass. Once up, I hit some sink and dropped 15 feet, almost touching down before climbing again.

Most of the fog was between 250 and 550 feet. I climbed above it briefly and realized that if I continued, I would be out of sight of the ground most of the time. The flow was from the North East and looked to be thickening. I could see where I was on the GPS. I could have easily climbed above where the visibility was great and it was undoubtedly warmer but …. not a good idea. I would have risked landing in pea soup.

So… I landed with just 8 minutes of air time. Plenty.