Dustin will be flying the 154 (the same one I was flying) in Arizona soon for a week, so maybe he'll have something to say about it.

On Wednesday I took the T2C-144 up for a spin, and flew around Quest Air for an hour and a half. It was 9 to 13 mph out of the west, blue with a hard inversion at 4,300'. It was cold, but I was dressed warmly except for my hands (just had on my fingerless bicycle gloves). I kept the visor down but after a while my hands would get too cold when I got over 3,500'.

The 144 flew just fine but it wasn't tested trying to find very marginal lift. The lift varied between strong - 600 fpm, and quite weak <100 fpm, but the weak lift was nearby. The 144 is easy to thermal and adjust your thermal radius in flight. If you want to tighten it up, just push on the outside end of the control bar. It carves a turn.

I'm getting use to the 144 and retraining myself. A couple of more flights and I should have it down.

I'm thinking about going to the extra pulley to make the VG easier to pull on. It is pretty easy now, but I figure that I'll use the VG more actively if it is real easy. That seemed to be the case with the Litesport and the 154.

Took the 144 up again on Thursday. Another blue day with a few distance cu's. The wind was 4 to 9 mph out of the south, so quite a bit less than Wednesday. Top of the lift in the blue when I was flying was about 4,500'.

The 144 was a dream to fly. I worked my way upwind to the Seminole sailplane port 14 km south of Quest Air on highway 33. Whenever I find strong sink I turned and went 90 degrees to the left or right as I knew the lift and sink would be streeting up given that there was enough wind for that. It worked, as I always found lift (not a proof, of course).

I was bouncing between 2,000' and 4,5000' and had to work each piece of lift as my first goal was to stay up (not race), my second goal was to get the turnpoint and then get back, and my third goal was to see how the glider felt.

The glider felt just fine. It handled all the bumps and gyrations in the air without a concern on my part. It is a sweet handling glider.

After I turned around at the sailplane port, it was one thermal and then race home. When I got back to Quest at 1,200' I found Dennis Cavagnaro circling just below me in his ATOS. There was lift every where and I had to struggle to find a useable patch of sink to get down. I thought Dennis was having the same problem. Turned out he was trying to stay up but landed well on his wheels.