As luck would have it, on Saturday I managed to set a modest but
important, unofficial site milestone for Falcons by flying a 20-mile round trip
from Kagel Mountain to Mt. Lukens and back during the bi-weekly Falcon League of
the Sylmar Hang Gliding Association. An article about our club's single surface
league was published in the November issue of Hang Gliding and Paragliding
Magazine. The only other pilot to make that round trip out of 40 (including H2s
and H3s) who flew that day was on a Litespeed RS4.
Due to the limited ceiling, wide areas of sink, and overall spotty conditions we
were flying in, I actually caught up with him briefly on my way back from Mt
Lukens. There was a great deal of teamwork with different pilots involved in
making this flight a success. A friend of mine, Jason who weighs all of 150
pounds was flying solo on his Tandem Falcon 230 and came very close to tagging
the near end of Mt. Lukens and scratching his way back. I normally fly a T2C
144, but thoroughly enjoy going cross country on a single surface glider because
of the immediacy of the consequences of every action you take while flying. It's
analogous to racing lightweight sailing dinghies in order to hone one's yacht
racing skills. I hope more clubs take this into consideration when fostering XC
skills among their ranks.
Thanks to the GoPro HD camera's ability to record over 2 1/2 hours of continuous
HD quality video with a 170 degree diagonal field of view, I was able to capture
the experience in this video, edited down to 10 minutes:
