Sounds like you'll be missing the first day of the fly-in.

We're going except I'm not sure exactly when yet since she has an appointed Friday afternoon....so I may leave early Friday morning without her or late Friday or early Saturday with her.

Tucker

Sherry and I are planning to drive up Friday after work, and staying in a motel in Cottonwood. Hope to see some of you Saturday morning on the mountain.

Terry

sorry i couldn't make it. i worked all weekend

Me and Racquel arrived at Mingus Friday night and found out that conditions were really bad Friday. Only 3 people flew and one of those crashed. I don't think he was hurt.

Saturday conditions were really good. The first HG to launch (Gary) was an H2 being instructed by Mark Knight. We watched him and eventually we all lost sight of him. Even with our binoculars, we couldn't spot him anywhere. Come to find out, he had crashed while trying to make the 10th street LZ. He didn't have enough altitude and landed in a subdivision before the LZ. He hit a power line and broke two of his ribs and broke his hip. He survived....

Shortly after, Laura launched her HG, stalled during launch and turned into the ridge about 10 or 20 ft down and to the left. Scratched her face up a bit and hurt her knee. Her knee became very swollen but she's walking around and doing okay. She was very lucky considering. Her glider didn't fare so well.

A little later, I launched and went to almost 16k MSL. I didn't have any oxygen so I opted to go XC very soon after reaching that altitude. I headed straight for what looked like might be Chino. I think there was a head wind and I sunk pretty quickly. Fortunately, I found 2 or 3 places along the way I could thermal up a few thousand feet, otherwise I would not have made it to Chino. I landed a few miles north of Chino (next to old 89) for a ~22 mile XC in about 2 hours. I achieved two personal bests out of that flight which was the highest and farthest I had ever flown before.

Sunday got cloudy early but a few people launched early before it over developed. The rest of us just sat and watched as conditions went from bad to worse and then even worse. I don't think anyone soared that day and most didn't fly at all.

Monday, wasn't looking very good either with too many clouds in the sky again and with a pretty stiff wind coming over the back. So most everyone left early including the Tucson PG rift raft (John Wolfe, Andy, Terry). A few of us stayed in hopes of it getting better. The wind did change direction and the sun did manage to come out around noon for a short while. So about 6 of us launched although it had completely clouded over again by the time I launched. Still, there was lift and most of us managed to get a few hundred feet above launch for a little while before getting flushed out. I managed to find lift (albeit somewhat rowdy) in the usual house thermal areas and eventually landed at 10th street for a 1 hour flight.

A big thanks to the Phoenix club for all of their hospitality.

Crazy weekend.

Tucker

First we want to say a big thanks to all the drivers. We could not have done this without you. We had 14 pilots sign up for the task and we received 7 track logs for Saturday’s task. Saturday was a big day, and people were reporting the highest that they had ever been (16,000-17,000ft). We set up 3 tasks: Task 1 with 4 waypoints around launch and 10th street as goal. We did not have anyone complete Task 1. Terry made the first waypoint and landed at 10th street. This was Terry’s first time landing at 10th street. Congratulations to Terry on his first 10th street landing. Task 2 was the same 4 waypoints around launch, then over the back to the power station, Drake and goal being at Ashfork. We did not have anyone complete the course. Brad made it the furthest of 63.8km of the total 77.1km task. Congratulations to Brad and his hard work of sticking with it. Andy made it just a little past Drake for second place. Stan did a good job as well with his Atos but because he did not tag the Drake waypoint that put him into 3rd place. Stan still had a great flight by going to Asfork and then on to Seligman. That’s why we need to get track logs to check if everyone tags the waypoints. Also want to say congratulations to John & Gavin for their first flights over the back of Mingus. Both of them made it just past the power station. The power station area was hard to get through. If you look at all the track logs except for Stan’s, everyone got low in the area of the power station. Task 3 was the same as Task 2 except it was open distance once you got to Ashfork. Stan would have gotten this if he had tagged Drake.

On Sunday the clouds shut down the lift and I think Steve had the best flight of the day. Most everyone else that flew had a sled ride.

It was lots of fun, and we hope everyone enjoyed the task. Thanks to the AZHPA for putting on such a fun fly-in.

This is the link to the website with the Mingus results and to a kml file with all the participants’ track logs we received.

Copy the link below into a new browser window and click on the result tab, Task, Mingus 090311 to get the files.
https://sites.google.com/site/sazxcleague/

Link to my photobuck for the Mingus Fly-in
http://s263.photobucket.com/albums/ii13 ... %20Mingus/


Thank you

Andy Miller & John Wolfe