Soaring

Up


September 6, 2003 I headed out to Briggs, TX (about 60 miles away) and took a demo ride with the Fault Line Flyers.

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One of the tow planes, a Cessena 152 with a bigger than normal engine.

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The other tow plane.

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Three gliders circling in a thermal ...

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You can just make out the tow line

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Landing. See the spoilers?

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Just about my turn, finally! Had to wait several hours ...

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We're moving!

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Airborne! Like the low budget slip indicator?

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Looks like our turn has become uncoordinated ...

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Here's the instruments you have to deal with. Without an engine, there's a lot less stuff needed.

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You've got one hell of a field of vision in this thing!

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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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That's the spoiler -- air brakes. Without them, these things will glide a very long time ...

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Final approach

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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 ...

Photo album generated by album from MarginalHacks on Sun Feb 29 00:17:46 2004