- Mon Oct 28, 2013 1:27 am
#337047
As much as I hate advertising that I'm a doofus I feel this video might be instructional for others who wish to overfill their plate on a flying day. I love flying new sites, scoping them out, learning as much as I can about them and determining how best to fly them. At the pinnacle of new site flying for me is the pioneering of sites never flown (at least that I know of). One such site I've had my sights on since summer is Mount Leona in the Colville National Forest of NE Washington (in the Kettle Mountain Range of the Okanogan Highlands). On Google Earth the summit looked fairly bare and ripe for an easy launch pick. Not so. Due to a large fire in the area 20 or so years ago one can see lots of fallen dead trees in the satellite photos. What one can't easily see is all the dead standing trees. It took us awhile to negotiate our way to the summit and to find a launch. I began to feel great anticipation of flying and I also felt a bit rushed. I set up quickly and preflighted quickly. Honestly though, my lower ribs on the U2 have not been in my preflight sequence. Due to the many aluminum colored dead branches on the slope my 2 left wing undersurface ribs went unnoticed and remained on launch when I ran into the blue (they're still there). That's not everything though. I had also somehow gotten my zipper up line around the foot of my Tracer. After launching I couldn't zip up and couldn't figure out why. And, while trying to zip up I entered into a left turn. That repeated itself about 3 times - and then some later on. So, I now had 2 things on my mind: why won't my harness zip up and why do I have a left turn in my U2. I wore long underwear so the not being zipped up part wasn't that much of a deal but not knowing why I had a wee bit more than a slight left turn had me perplexed. I looked over the wings a bit but not at the underside ribs. Being somewhat of an undaunted person I tried to make the best of the flight. I even decided that nothing was all that wrong and that I could test out my drogue/drag chute for my 2nd time - at a LZ I'd only seen on Google Earth (I like compounding things don't I!). Well, the chute did not work as it did the first time (first time was flawless). So, my landing is quite embarrassing. I simply blew it and ended up taking out a downtube. I was expecting the chute to slow me down at least some and maybe the difference in stall between the two differently shaped wings had something to do with it. But, I really know the main factor in all of this. I just had too much on my plate for the day.....
http://paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/842088
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlnogohchJM[/youtube]
http://paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/842088
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlnogohchJM[/youtube]
Attachments
LeonaMap.jpg (111.99 KiB) Viewed 10340 times
Steve Baran � U2 160 � Chattaroy, WA - USA � USHPA# 16529 � www.centeroflift.org