Soaring |
Up |
soar01 |
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soar07 One of the tow planes, a Cessena 152 with a bigger than normal engine. |
soar08 The other tow plane. |
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soar10 Three gliders circling in a thermal ... |
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soar15 You can just make out the tow line |
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soar20 Landing. See the spoilers? |
soar21 Just about my turn, finally! Had to wait several hours ... |
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soar24 We're moving! |
soar25 Airborne! Like the low budget slip indicator? |
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soar31 Looks like our turn has become uncoordinated ... |
soar32 Here's the instruments you have to deal with. Without an engine, there's a lot less stuff needed. |
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soar35 You've got one hell of a field of vision in this thing! |
soar36 That's the airport in the right side of the picture. Not much to look at from the air, and apparantly really hard to find :) |
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soar38 That's the spoiler -- air brakes. Without them, these things will glide a very long time ... |
soar39 Final approach |
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soar42 |
soar43 Unfortunately, the flight only lasted about 12 minutes. Normally they aim for 30 minutes (for the demo rides), but I didn't get to fly until after 5pm, and by then most of the thermals are dying out. So we never really found any good lift. If only I'd gotten to fly earlier, while they were finding great thermals ... |