A few shots from Quest Air before flying south,
here.

As far as I was concerned conditions had much improved on Saturday from the day
before, but others were of the opposite persuasion. It was still out of the west
but a lot lighter on the ground at, least. There were a couple of cu's a little
after noon when I launched early and just boomed out of the field with the tug
and I going up at 1,200 to 1,300 fpm. I pinned off at 1,000' and climbed at 500
fpm to 4,500' cloud base.

There were plenty of sail planes to the south and it was easy to get into the
thermals with them under the fast forming cu's. Within half an hour the sky was
full of cu's. I quickly found myself south of 474 at cloud base but east
of highway 33, i.e. downwind of it. I missed a thermal under a cu that wasn't
just forming and headed southwest so that if I did go down I would be near Brown
Shin road. Down to 1,300' I saw the vultures circling low and slow over a pond
and went with them to 2,400' drifting quickly back to the northeast, back
over the Branson Ranch area with its locked gates.

Pounding ahead again upwind to try to stay near retrievable areas, I went back
to the same spot finding big sink and had to land next to the public road.
Belinda came by after picking up Dustin trying to go the other way and not
getting nearly the conditions that I had. Soon after I landed the sky filled up
and the ground was shaded. We then picked up Larry Bunner back up highway 33. He
had much trouble getting out of Quest in weak lift. Filippo Oppici, flying
his new Wills Wing T2C 144 (carbon downtubes), made it from Quest to Wallaby
never getting below 3,000' and Steve Bellerby made it there slowly, taking four
hours to go the twenty miles.

 

There was a large turnout for the Wills Wing Demo Days, as always, and I got to
catch up with folks from all over the country. Picked up a few news items and
I'll elaborate on those later.

The Wills Wing crew was there of course and Mike Meier did a nice job thanking
everyone for putting on a great party. We had the great fortune to see two
videos, the new Dreaming Awake teaser (a stunning helicopter view of hang
gliding at Big Sur) and a rough cut of a new film by Seth Warren on working to
protect natural areas. Seth is down at Wallaby working on a film about hang
gliding. Dreaming Awake is supposed to be out next year.

Thanks to Mike, Steve and Linda for putting on a great party, celebrating your
milestone in style, and doing such a great job building the Wills Wing family.