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Pre-Groundhog's

From: Ron Faoro
Activity_Date: 1/31,2/1
Remote Name: 165.247.243.43

Comments

What a week for soaring at Skyport! Flights every day. Long distances covered, new terrain explored by many pilots and beautiful Santa Barbara scenery thrown in. The usual chills, spills and thrills supplemented by a dash of good old-fashioned terror.

I flew Thursday and was the first to launch of a second round of pilots to start off the hill around 11 AM. Grade A lift in the house thermal and I was ratcheting up over the R&R in no time. Bob Hurlbett joined me and we fairly well exploded up to 4,500 feet hanging on for dear life. Bob had in mind that he was going to East Beach and wasn't going to let a little 15 mph headwind stand in his way. Being a blood-brother in the sport, I felt it necessary to follow him and protect him from evil. The Monstrous East wind chewed up the glide but we came over the Thermal Factory and started fishing. It was remarkably barren of thermals considering the dynamic day everywhere else. We floated down to the Antenna Farm and scratched to hang on. We had seen Tom Pipkin take the West Escalator out of here earlier, so we knew we could connect if we were patient. That's when I noticed the radio silence.

Now, Bob is like some other seemingly inept local pilots (I won't name names, Benson) who fail to lock on a radio frequency. So all my pleading to Bob about course of action never reached his "wandering frequency." By this time, Bob had latched onto a ripper and was being pulled like a hooked fish toward the Holy Hills. I was busy minding my own nightmare and failed to see him take the ill-advised path that led to him flushing to Parma. Meanwhile, after 20-30 minutes of getting the maracas traetment ("Ay carrumba") over the Antenna Farm, I finally reeled in the Big Kahuna and had the strangest thermal experience of my short flying career. It started at the Round House and with a nearly flat trajectory headed straight back up the hill toward Skyport. I cleared the wires by only a hundred feet and was getting lifted slowly, directly up the center of the canyon. People were still jumping off launch, so, when I thought I had the altitude, I took the bullet train to the Holy Hills. There I circled while the high octane lift peeled paragliders off the slopes and swatted them like gnats toward Cathedral Peak. By this time, radio reports were coming in from everywhere. People down in canyons, people stuck in bowls and the whole crowd wishing they had transportation. When Kevin Dumain was sucked into the void above me and vacuumed off in the east wind to Cathedral, I knew what I had to do.

You see, I had a committment to play volleyball at East Beach at 2:00 PM. So I needed enough height to do battle with the prodigious wind and earn my landing at Parma. It took some doing, but I rocketed up the Holy Hills toward the R&R again, yanked like a marionette with a drunken puppeteer. Once high over the top, above the rocks and snow patches, I crawled to the East. A few turns over launch, a raucous ride to the Thermal Factory where the devil's lift was now in effect, then off toward Parma in a serious crab, going with the viscious drift. I made it to the LZ with a thousand to spare. But the wind was shifting by ninety degrees every 20 seconds or so and Parma was thermally, so the landing was anything but routine. Between the wind and some big punchy bumps, I visited almost every corner of the park, trying to decide how to land. Half my attention was given over to praying and finally I found myself directly over the oak tree with the flag, about 15 feet above it. Incredibly, I made three full 360's at this height and then smoked in over the boulders to land over near the gate on the trail out. Terra firma.

At East Beach a half hour later, it was the most beautiful afternoon I had ever seen. There wasn't even a whisper of wind. You could look back toward those gorgeous hills and think, "You had to be there."

Friday was a bit more sane. Dan Keyser and Tom Beidler and I went up at 11:30 and launched at noon. Once again we soared over the R&R with ease. Chad joined us on his eastbound course and we thermaled together for some time until we decided to cruise to the Thermal Factory with a little under 4,000 feet. We had great fun there. Eventually, Chad continued east, Dan went to the beach and Tom Beidler and I pointed toward Parma. Tom landed and started packing up. I was at 1,100 and getting ready to do a slow spiral in to land when I hit a thermal at the north end of the LZ. I took it up 300 feet, floated around, found another for another 200 feet and just kept working this consistent lift for over thirty minutes. I even made a play for the Monastery, thinking I'd go back up, top-land and drive the truck down. Then suddenly the lift was gone and my long flight came to an end. Benson landed shortly thereafter on the inaugural flight for his new Airwave Sport, large. This pretty red wing with the yellow leading edge still had some flight time left in it for the day. We had lunch, picked up Dan at the roundabout on Salinas and headed back up for retrieval. But, wouldn't you know it, it was blowing in nicely at Skyport at 3:30 PM. So Dan and Benson flipped for the flight; Dan "won" and Benson let him lay out the new Sport. After getting the lines straightened out while a perfectly good, long thermal passed, Dan was ready. But he didn't believe us when we said it was still good to go. He pulled up, turned, and then let the wing get out in front of him while the slight bit of west in the wind turned the new wing toward the oak tree. Dan sauntered down the slope, you could see he was considering aborting the launch. But the wing gained more energy and Dan finally had to concede he was going. He cut a wide swath through the chaparral directly next to the oak tree. Now, I've personally witnessed Sundowner trying to fly THROUGH this tree and not succeed. Today I realized the key is body MASS. The sticks were flying, the leaves were shaking and the tiny critters were fleeing, but Dan made it out the other side! Only trouble was, the lines on the left side of the wing had hooked the tree and a 60% collapse ensued on the left side of the wing. It looked like Dan was doomed to swing round and test the body mass theory against Mother Earth. But, miraculuosly, (call it stupid luck) the wing re-inflated and Dan had only one more hairball to spit up. The wing was now way out in front of him again and he (slightly slowed by his trip through the debris field) pendulumed toward the ground in front of launch, going west to east, at about thirty miles an hour. A little butt scrape later he was enjoying the glide on the new Sport toward Parma. Benson, of course, was more worried about his new wing.

Benson drove Dan back up to Skyport to get his truck. Next thing I know, while I'm sitting here dutifully pecking out the day's events, I get a call from Benson to come and pick him up at Frank's house! It seems that Benson took the liberty of one more flight so I could take him in the dark back up to launch to get his car. I guess you can never have too much of a good thing.

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