My First Great Hang Gliding Flight at Cloud 9 Michigan 2009

As always we take a chance with the weather and although it may be a sunny day that does not necessarily mean that there will be lift in the way of thermals. Often when there are good thermals they will be marked by a sky full of cumulous clouds but on this Friday June 5, 2009 there was a beautiful blue sky with not a cloud to be found. I arrive at Cloud 9 field just east of Lansing at 1 pm and start to set up my glider and after about a half hour another pilot shows up and wants to join me in the sky hoping that there will be some lift. I am ready first and get in position to be towed by Tracy Tillman with his wonderful Dragonfly tow plane. The tow is bumpier than usual meaning that there will likely be lift and I take a tow to 2,300 feet where I hit a strong thermal and release the tow rope and start circling and find ample lift that gets me up to over 3,000 feet but then I notice that I have forgotten to zip up one of my batten pockets and the dive recovery batten is hanging out. The glider seems to be handling OK but I feel uneasy with it open like that so I land and close the zipper while Pat Winther gets towed up and starts to sky out. Next Lisa one of the owners of Cloud 9 is in line and ready so Tracy tows Lisa up and she also gains some altitude so I am anxiously waiting for my second tow and Tracy zooms down to pick me up and we are off. This time I take the full tow to 2,500 feet and find a nice thermal right away and drift with it to about 3,500 feet where Lisa and I fly close together in the same thermal and finally Lisa takes off and heads west about two miles to find something better and I stay with the first thermal and get up to 5,400 feet and Lisa comes back after about ten minutes but is about 50 feet below me. All this time Pat is of to the north about two miles sometimes doing well but then I see Pat down low and next thing I know he is up at 5,000feet again so it must be good over there to. After drifting back about four miles I decide to head back to over the launch field and when I get there I am down to 2,000 feet and in search mode and I do find another good one and it takes me back up to 6, 960 feet and I try to break 7,000 feet but never do. After a couple of hours I have been back up and down many times from 3,000 feet to over six grand and I see Lisa head in for a landing and all goes well. Next Pat joins me and he can?t quite get up to me at 6,000 feet and finally I see Pat take of to the west and a half hour later I see him landing. Well at this point I figure that I need another twenty minutes to break Pat?s flight time of three hours so I hang on to all the lift I can find and finally it turns into another good one at 400 feet per minute climb to 6,600 feet and I am well past the 3-1/2 hour mark and find more lift at 5:30 which is unusual as the lift generally dies around 5 pm. I am having such a great flight that I stay up until 6:15 and come in for a nice landing so happy that this was a great day and the trip was well worth while. In all I logged four hours airtime and my best gain was from 1,500 feet up to 5,900 feet so I am a happy camper.

Skydog