[Bill Cummings]

Mother Nature and Father Murphy were in the computer room giggling and chuckling as they surfed the hang gliding web pages. Ah Ha says Father Murphy - look here Mother Nature, The Arizona Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association has a Labor Day Weekend Fly-in scheduled. Let’s start a tropical storm off of the Baja and have it push moisture north and east toward Mingus Mountain, AZ. What do you think Mother Nature? ---Tee Hee, Tee Hee.
“Excellent devious plan Murphy. Let’s do it. Oh you Dah Man!” says Mother Nature. “Will that put the screws to any other HG clubs? Oh Goodie let’s surf some more websites and find out."
"Har! Har! We have all day. Why not? Har! Har! Har!
Father Murphy says, "Can you make it big enough to get most of California too?"

[SamKellner]

That's a good one Bill.

Organizing Fly-ins is hit and miss, for sure.

Man, we have some awesome Cu. clouds here today. I need to look at Satellite loop.

Wish I'd been flying instead of tying re- bar

[Bill Cummings]

It was raining here so I was retying one on in a bar.

[Bob Kuczewski]

Wish I'd been flying instead of tying re- bar

It was raining here so I was retying one on in a bar.

[Bill Cummings]

Hey Hawks,

I didn’t go to Mingus Mountain Arizona (USA) for the Labor Day Weekend.
I left my glider and other equipment at home, took off the bumper rack, and only did 415 miles of the 500.2 miles in that direction. I met my wife (not for the first time.) at her folks house in Sun City, AZ to hang out and put on some wing loading. (I should glide faster now.)
On the way Ole called from Mingus and he said that the bucket on the picnic table had 6 inches of water in it after just Thursday night. That night he woke up and thought a fire truck had pulled up and started hosing down his Bounder motor home.
It was cloudy Friday and Saturday but did clear enough that pilots were able to fly Sunday and Monday. On the AZHPA website there are some pictures of the clouds hanging about Mingus as a pilot was G.A. flying into Cottonwood Airport down below.
I’m now back at Las Cruces, NM and several of us are waiting for the wind to stop blowing east and Saturday is looking good for Dry Canyon, Alamogordo, NM. We have our fingers crossed.

[Bob Kuczewski]

Best wishes on the wind Bill!!

                        

[Bill Cummings]

Thanks Bob,
You will be happy to know that your “Best wishes,” really kicked in over here.
The forecast was wrong for this area. We were expecting light SE going to south for the wind but as we arrived in Alamogordo, New Mexico, (USA) I was thinking that we were already blown out.
I was the last to be set up since I was using Simple Green to take off the cactus stain near the nose of my leading edge. (From Turtling my glider on the 21of last month.) Also I had to put two sail tape patches on the leading edges.
Robin Hastings for the first time set up his U2 without any help. He said he noticed a small tip flap on one wing during his last flight. I tried to comfort him by telling him that was normal for a lot of U2’s. Robin then was worried about the other wing tip lacking normal flap. Mike told Robin that he had Velma sew material on each of his U2 wing tips to make them stop flapping.

Everyone liked my suggestion of making up a fake Wills Wing T shirt that says, “U2. We’ll do the flapping so that you don’t have too!” (I really do love my Sport 2 glider and I‘m thinking that is what my next new glider will be.)

As soon as we had all finished the set up buddy check on everyone’s glider the wind into the ramp wouldn’t even twitch toilet paper. We backed Mike Ellsworth off of the ramp so that he could kick rocks with the rest of us and be unencumbered by harness and glider.

We just about decided to, “Bag-it-and- drag-it,” when the big cloud above us started to dissipate. So with the sun shining back on the side of the mountain thermals started moving to the ramp. All told there were seven of us and two dogs up top. Paraglider Marten and wife Kitty, drivers Brandon and Jared, HG pilots, Robin, Mike and myself.
Kitty was sitting on a food cooler in the shade of her vehicle with her two dogs at her feet. I thought she was out of ear shot of what Robin was saying to Jared and Brandon. I could just barely hear Robin talking and I was straight down wind and wasn’t behind a vehicle like Kitty was. Robin was asking Brandon and Jared, “If a man speaks and there is no woman around to hear him is he still wrong?”
Kitty yelled out, “YES!!” I just about split a gut on that one.

It was after four before we all launched. Of course, and as often happens, before Robin launched his radio low battery alarm started beeping. The good news was that he had a good spare along. The bad news was his good spare battery was 3.5 miles away in his truck down at the LZ. I can’t say in all honesty if I were to hear Robins voice come out of my ear piece again that I would still recognize it.
Actually Robin had a new radio with a fully charged battery along only the remote microphone would not work with this unit.

I think I’ll change the subject now since I know it will be difficult to type with my eyes clouded with tears of anguish and exasperation.

I have to check the weather history for our area but I’m thinking a cooler air mass backed across the mountains to the east of our flying area. We had a convergence cloud set up lengthwise up the Tularosa Basin. I was able to make it to 13’300’ msl and thermals within this convergence gave me an incredible maximum climb rate of 1,240’/min. (Smooth)
George Woodcock radioed to us from his house 8 miles northwest of launch that Robin was above his house. He had flown to Tularosa and back to land at George’s house. Mike and I decided to head NW and have our drivers pick us up there. The convergence was strong enough to fly straight up Hwy 54 while climbing at 400’/min. As I arrived again at 12,400’ I partially stuffed the control bar until I was zooming north at zero sink. I flew past George and Velma’s house and turned around at the town of Tularosa and zoomed back to George’s house. Mike and I had to auger down through the convergence lift to land. Flying for much of the time at 12,400’ the temperature was 57 degrees and the wind chill really had me cold. We had a 12 mph east steady wind to land in. I touched down at 7:05 pm, for an airtime of 2hr and 43 minutes. It was dark before we put the gliders on the truck rack. It was 10:30 pm when I arrived home in Las Cruces. (About 80 mile drive from George and Velma’s house.)

Bob, Please no more wishes better than that one otherwise we will get sucked up into the cloud. We can’t handle a better day!
Maybe this post should be in the personal flying thread

[Bob Kuczewski]

Everyone liked my suggestion of making up a fake Wills Wing T shirt that says, “U2. We’ll do the flapping so that you don’t have too!” (I really do love my Sport 2 glider and I‘m thinking that is what my next new glider will be.)

It was a stressful day at Torrey today, but when I read your line above, I burst out laughing. The rest of your post was great as well (including Kitty's supernatural hearing, and a spectacular XC run) , but that line about the flapping just tickled my funny bone.

     

Thanks Bill!!!