Crestline Soaring Society

ftp://ftp.knumbknuts.com/KnumbKnutsAndBlakely.zip

Father's Day was kind of quiet. I was surprised there weren't more short chromosome types cashing in their chips for a little airtime on Sunday. Mike Blakely was the only one who joined me for an early ride to Crestline. I had to be sure to fly early to get back for a 5 o'clock BBQ in Laguna.

So, I took a one hour flight and took some video of it, to boot.

The camera on the glider is a Panasonic HDC-SD1, mounted upside down (the video was flipped in the editing software). It's aimed a little too high, but it worked out well for this portion of video. It records in a compressed High Def format.

The camera on the ground is an old Sony 8mm DV camera.

The software is Pinnacle Studio Plus with an extra plugin for the flip. Not the greatest software.

The codec is Divx as it comes with Pinnacle, so I don't know which version. If you can't see the video, go to divx.com to download divx software.

I'm flying a Falcon3 195, Mike is on a Sport 2 155.

The winds were 15-20 and fairly smooth, according to Samba, but they felt stronger. I warned Mike that if I looked like I was pointing straight at him, it was for the video.

My nephew, the driver and ground cameraman, got a shot of my landing, too. The flags in the LZ showed wind all the way around from ESE to SW and when I landed, the dust showed North wind (an eddy?) at my feet (which, fortunately, I landed on). That video will be on my website at somepoint.

The best part of the day is that I was in a hurry to land after a certain point and it is the first time that I've "sped" (cough cough) around on my falcon, instead of going near trim to try to get as long a flight as possible. Picture a kid bombing down a hill on a tricycle and you've got a good image of what I felt coming down.

By the way, I've limited ftp clients to two so I don't rack up a hefty bandwidth bill, in case you get denied trying to download.