May 5 Flight

Matt and I pulled YYY to Sunflower this morning as it was our first day of scheduled ops at the club.  The forecast wasn't too promising but I was hoping to be able to get in the air by about 3 and had planned up a short 2 hr task that wouldn't get me too far from home. Leah was willing to come out and retrieve if needed.  We assembled and I had the glider ready to go about 1:30.  I ended up doing 4 flights in the 2-33 in the meantime, 3 with a student and one guest flight.  This opportunity to sniff showed that there wasn't much cooking and it certainly didn't feel hot enough on the ground. It needed to get to 92 or 93F for the lift to be as good as it was going to be.

I took off about 3:30 just to give it a shot.  I figured I had driven and assembled, might as well fly.  My tow behind the souped up Cessna 175 was quite a ride and less than 3 minutes after takeoff I released and started searching. Couldn't find much except some zero sink.  Held altitude 3 times and extended the flight to a total of 20 minutes.  Here is the OLC link: http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?dsId=2324937

It seems that the transponder gremlins have magically cured themselves. Good enough for me.

Matt got some good pictures today. Here are a few of YYY.