The past several days have seen some great local flying, as a rare
mid- summer cold front made it all the way down to the gulf coast. Its influence
precluded long distance flights but several triangle attempts with remarkably
strong conditions at time were made. Pilots were late launching on Saturday,
likely the best of these days, when some small OD cells grayed out the course.
Here's a video compilation of life in Zapata that day, along with a message from
OK Price who shot it: "28th had climbs to 8700, My 10 second averager showed
1200 up. Too much wind for triangles. Fun abundant climbs."
After launching the pilots, I went up in the Silent 2 Electro and had some fun
runs in the grayed out overdevelopment. It took a little while to get up, but
after doing so I had four runs along a 25-30 mile line without circling at
average speeds around 83 mph and top speeds about 125mph. A low speed low
altitude pass before landing at 156 mph groundspeed was, well, Silent. The hour
and a half flight was a blast.
Early on Saturday, Bobby bailey gave BJ Herring a tow in the tandem Falcon and
both put on an aerobatic display for the Zapata Boy and Girls Club. BJ landed
exactly to a spot at the Club's field.
Attila has launched at 12 pm after some glider tuning, and has declared Garden
City, TX as a Goal today.
