Month: October 2024

Perserverance … That’s the takeaway word from today’s flight.

I awoke about 5am and futzed around the house until almost 6:15 when I pulled out of the garage and turned North towards Placida. I was about to turn off Edgewater Ave when I realized that I’d forgotten to put the ramps back into the bed when I was doing the preflight yesterday. …Immediate U turn back to the house. Losing 30 minutes, I diverted to Shell Creek after retrieving the ramps.

There was a smattering of ground fog over the freshly mowed runway. I did my best to lay out the wing without dragging the top surface over the wet grass but when I started the launch it was obviously wet. I rolled about 50 feet with it swinging left and right without fully inflating. Second attempt, I roughly dragged the soaking wet wing into formation and wrestled it into the sky. After 3 swings I could see that it was going to fully inflate so I added a little power and brought her overhead, the climb out was shallow but acceptable.

Following Shell Creek to the East, there was very little visible damage. Either they were built higher than I thought or the residents had already mucked out. There several small open fires that could have been storm debris. I noticed that there was very little breeze at the surface and that it was running counter to the air 100 feet higher.

Climbing in very calm air to 3000 ft. I enjoyed the crystal clear air. The wing dried out relatively quickly.

The landing was smooth but ….

while hauling the rig into the truck I fell backwards onto my tailbone. I’m going to have to find a good way to get some traction on the bed liner or I’m going to get hurt.

All in all it was a pretty standard flight, not the EPIC Gasparilla Post Milton flight ,that I had planned but satisfying. Two sloppy attempts and a time consuming glitch, didn’t cause a …NO FLY DAY.