soga-2017

The Skydog Report

Sunday October 1, 2017 Patrick and I drive to SOGA field on a sunny day. Gary our new tow pilots takes me up first and I struggle getting down to 1,300 feet and then I find a bubble that I work up to 2,700 feet ato. Patrick gets airborne next and has a thirty minute flight. Steve Benn, Rod Regier and Troy Whitmore all had good flights working hard for the lift. After 4:30 the lift was somewhat better and Rod, Steve and myself were twirling with six sailplanes from our neighbouring York Soaring. My first flight was 57 minutes and my last flight was 1 hour and 5 minutes and I topped out at 2,985 feet ato. Happy faces below.

The Skydog Report

Monday July 3, 2017 Back to SOGA field again and this time we have eleven pilots and a great looking sky full of cummies. By 1 pm we are in line and ready for Brennan to tow us skyward. I think I may have been third to get pulled up and like most others I landed after 18 minutes. John Pop took an early tow and stuck for 45 minutes so we were all getting hyped up. Around 4 o'clock the lift turned on and most of us got into some thermalling activity. Oded got up to cloud base with a few others and stuck it out for 2 hours and 15 minutes. George Adams had a wild take off and landed safely as he was released from the tug and then went again for a better flight. Ken Kinzie was up at base with us and I think that Kenny had over two hours. My second flight was 1 hour and 32 minutes and up to 3,700 feet ato into the mist. Oh yes, I had a low save and after release I got down to 500 feet and worked back up to base as the Flytec graph shows below. Lots of happy faces in the landing field after a slow start to our season here in Southern central Canada.

The Skydog Report

Wednesday June 28, 2017 I drove to SOGA field as Kenny Kinzie made an event called Wednesday WingOvers. The forecast was for west winds of up to 30 km per hour and we were hoping that the cutting of the trees would help us get out of the West facing runway. Our first take offs by Andy Dion and me were out of the north runway and were uneventful other than bumpy near the ground. Kenny Kinzie decided that the west facing runway may be better so he took a tow from there and it was totally scary with his left wing lifting the cart well off the ground and then a wild left turn and finally Brennan dumped the rope and Kenny made a good landing. Well, it seemed that the wind was coming pretty straight in that runway so Kenny tried again and this time all went well and Kenny broke a weak link at 1,000 feet ato and thermalled up from there to 4,500 feet and had a flight of 1 hour and 17 minutes. Andy and I also took off from the west facing runway but neither of us were able to catch very much only getting two 20 minute flights each. It looked like there were too many cumulous clouds close together. It was an OK day for our first flights of the year in Canada.

June 28, 2017 Video