News
The News link is maintained by Martin Pilko
Saturday August 6, 2005
Warren's quote..."Another great weather day
at Red Deer Lake, with challenging conditions. The wind was out of the ESE at 15
to 25 kph, which is still reasonable. What's different is that the reeds and
lake water are generating nothing in the way of usable lift, and it takes a
while for the thermals to develop downwind off the grass field. The story today
was to fly straight downwind off launch until you hit lift, at least
200 yards downwind of the winch and maybe further. My Supra was beyond the point
of no return more often than not during the three flights that I got past 15
minutes. No walk of shame though, there's a bull and some cows in the field east
of the fence line.
Sticking around over the field got some bounces off the bubbles of lift and
you're down in 5 minutes.
Conversation of the day: Martin – It sure is peaceful around here, with the
birds and the lake. Just like being at a cabin except no water
skiers buzzing by to annoy you. Me – Yeah but we have your ASW-28 instead."
I bet Warren can't wait until I get that electrified DG 1000 going. It's going to be 32 cells of joy - that should make a little bit more noise for you. ;-) Below are some images from today's activity...
Tuesday August 2, 2005
Matt's quote... "And again, thanks to Kevin our flying field is mowed and BIG. Only a single shrub bush was left in order to have a marker, the orientation element on the entire field, which I think is biggest we ever had. One more cut like this , using the same equipment and the expended area will be smooth as the original grassy area was. Kevin made an excellent deal with Volker-Stevin and they will cut again."
Kevin's quote..."At 3:00pm yesterday a semi
trailer flatbed sporting a huge John Deer 4WD tractor and 15 foot wide
rough-field mower arrived at Lloyd Park - Jeff was driving. Bert, his supervisor
was along as well in his pickup. After de-trailering and a few adjustments to
get the mower deck height down to what we wanted, our little caravan headed down
the road to do battle with the jungle.
A quick circuit around the Kevin and Brian pre-mowed perimeter showed no
problems so Bert the boss left the mower driver be, and headed off in his
Volker-Stevin pickup. Jeff made quick work of the area we punched out last week.
The machine grunted a few times and the mowing deck belched clouds of dust as it
scalped down some of the hummocks and rodent holes. He was a little nervous on
the passes closest to the lake. As he worked his way to the centre, the thick
interior clover and grass caused it to break a sweat maybe once or twice. This
rig was quite the beast - Matt, Brian O, and I were amazed at what a little
horsepower (well really quite a bit) can do. All of this took not quite 2 hours.
Having been assured that the tractor and
mower combo could tackle small bushes and trees (Bert said trees up to fence
post thick would not be a problem) I laid out a new western edge to cut. It
munched away for another 45 minutes or so. The patented technique seemed to be
run over the tree with tractor and chew with mower at full height. Lower mower
deck and forward and reverse over the bush a few times for that mulching effect.
A few more swipes east of our parking lot and he was done!
Jeff really enjoyed his work. He couldn't help mowing the meridians beside our
gravel access road on the way out.
Just as Jeff was leaving about 6:00pm the Lloyd Park superintendent (forget his
name) came down to see what we were up to. He mentioned that they had broken
their tractor earlier this year trying to mow the heavy wet grass. The parts to
fix had just arrived in High River. He looked a little jealous staring at our
mounds of just mowed grass and clover.
Due to the heavy cut, there are mounds of grass that need spread around to dry
out and blow away. When folks are out walking around, a few swift kicks on the
odd big pile would go a long way towards speeding this process. There is also an
old piece of fencing half buried in the grass on the western edge that we should
dig out as well. I left it Flagged for now.
We are now pretty much in synch with the original schedule I had set up with
them. I will confirm with Cliff the Volker Stevin superintendent that we would
like them to bomb in for a quick trim the next time they are by the meridian in
early September.
I posted a new file of the expanded field layout last night. We're now just over
6 acres, and our shortest winch line is 150m if we are launching due SE. Most
other directions are sporting 200-250 m. Watch out if we are launching SW/NE -
we have 300m to play with."
The three below photos are courtesy of Matt B.
The below images were provided by Kevin Hanson.
Monday August 1, 2005
The wind kicked over to Southwest shortly after noon, thus, I headed out to Cochrane. I definitely wasn't disappointed, however, the wind died down at about 3'ish and by 4:30 pm the direction changed to South. I managed to get over an hour of stick time. The paragliders and the hang gliders came out - not sure if they managed to get "stability" in wind strength and direction after I left. The lift was great today - can't complain.
I understand that some club members did make it out to the thermal field today. I hear that it was a bit windy, however, planes did fly...
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