Friday at the Wichita Vintage Rally

Well we had a great day today here in Wichita. Most gliders arrived yesterday and about 25-30 people attended the cookout we had here at the Condon house last night which was a lot of fun and a great way to open the Rally. This morning we awoke to 200 foot ceilings and fog but I pulled the Std. Cirrus out to the gliderport where Hank Claybourn helped me rig. Hank and I were planning to do his flight review in the morning, once the clouds lifted.

The main task for the day was rigging and by 3 PM we had the Cirrus and the Cherokee II assembled, Richard Kirlkland and John Wells had assembled the 17 meter Dart, Matt Gonitzke and Pete had gotten the WSA Ka-6CR from Sunflower and rigged it, Jim Short's new-to-him MG-23 was together and John Hardy had arrived and rigged his Ka-8. Hank and I finally launched shortly before 3 on his flight review. Cloud base was low but there was lift EVERYWHERE, especially on our second flight. We were running at 70 mph on NE/SW lines for about 4 miles each direction and not losing altitude. It was great fun! John Hardy launched in the Ka-8 to join us and Neal Pfeiffer flew his award-winning Ka-2b with a passenger, Dave Ochsner I think.

Right after Hank and I landed I started quickly getting YYY ready to launch about the time it started sprinkling, which literally washed John & Neal out of the sky. All the gliders got a nice bath too, at least all that were sitting outside. The rain lasted for about 30 minutes which was long enough for me to decide not to fly after all, and we managed to squeeze everything in the hangar. Dinner was a local mexican place and lots of fun was had by all.

There are a lot of people here just visiting, without gliders, which really reinforces the always strong social aspect to a vintage glider meet. Lee & Dave from Lawrenceville drove over with Jim Short, Chad Wille is down from Iowa, Mike Weatherford & Hank Claybourn & Jim Duea & Steve Hard are all visiting from Oklahoma. Mike passed his Commercial Glider checkride last night, congrats to him!

Last I looked the soaring forecast is looking good for tomorrow and we'll have a few more attendees and a few more gliders too. I'll try to get a report up in the evening, I'm sure there will be some attempts for those coveted VSA coins to report.