Crestline Soaring Society

Sunday 4/13/2008. There was great air for the lucky but not so great for the unlucky today. Some specked out while others got short changed, the goddess of hang gliding was temperamental. Must have been close to 15 HGs sitting on Marshall at one point waiting for the switch and they were finally rewarded with launchable winds coming upslope. The first to do well were Bruce and Rebardan in their ATOS gliders, quickly becoming little dots against the blue. Later Kenny joined them in ruling the sky. Are those things really fair? I looked up the performance and they claim to have a sink rate of 140 fpm and a glide of 19:1, but when these guys fly I wonder if those numbers are reversed. They float like feathers but penetrate like nobodies business. There ought to be a law.
I was last to launch and saw almost no one get anything from the house thermal so I headed right away to cloud where I saw many do better. By then it was fairly easy to get up, at first to 5000 where I got stuck for a while, but then after horning in on one of Stan’s thermals I got to 8400. Generally didn’t find all that much lift along Crestline until I horned in on one of Mark Hoffman’s thermals. I started 800 over him, boy that was pleasing, but ended 800 below. He rode that one from 5000 to 9200.
There was a tiny bit of haze but there were hundred mile vistas up there. A great view of the high desert, and to the west I could see a bright shimmering strip on the horizon. (Could that be the ocean, or is just a brightly lit marine layer?)
Thanks to Rob for running the shuttle all the way up to Crestline and then waiting for an hour or more so we could watch the conditions before driving us down to Marshall when it didn't turn around. (It kept blowing down while we were there but I did see one HG launch from Crestline late in the day.)

Mike Z