Back Home, Finally!

Well, I made it back from the West Coast swing to the Tri-Slope Six-Pack and the ISR Spring PSS Fest, two of the premier rc slope soaring events in the US.

The minor inconvenience of the slopeflyer.com mini-van’s misfire issue was resolved at Roy’s Grand Dodge-Chrysler. Good service and the vehicle seems to be working fine.

I’ve been trying to get caught up before on real world life before I head to Kansas for the Third Jewel in this seasons Slope Soaring Triple Crown, the Midwest Slope Challenge. If you are going I’ll see you at Jack’s on Thursday evening if not on the slope earlier in the day!

Back at Home!

The 4-day trip to South Dakota for an RC Sailplane get together ended with my return to the homestead about 10PM last night. 9 hours driving each way, but it was worth it!

It was a great few days of flying with about 15 slope soaring friends. 3 slopes over 4 days gave us a variety of conditions and action from slermals to decent DS conditions.

Keep your eyes peeled for an update at slopeflyer.com complete with pix!

[composed and posted with ecto]

Heading to South Dakota for Some Slope Flying

5:30AM will come pretty early for me, I normally like to get up about 8, but for a trip to the promised land of slope flying I guess I’ll make the sacrifice. Mirko, Dave and I making the trip in Mirko’s van, packed with about 35 or 40 slope sailplanes! Should be a good time. South Dakota has some really nice places to fly.

Check out slopeflyer.com for updates and pix when I get back on Sunday.

Additions to the slopeflyer.com web site

I added a couple of new stories to slopeflyer.com recently.

Allan sent in a nice story and some pix about a NoCal slope soaring site about 60 miles North of San Fran, near the Russian River outlet.

I posted a bit about the first flight of my Airtech Fitness.

Finally I added some pix of Mirko’s new Wizard BPV. Didn’t get to fly it on this day but the plane sure looks great!

Keep your eyes peeled. I have a couple more stories in the cue.

Slopeflying at Atwater Beach 02-26-05

Mirko and I got out and flew some today. We hit Atwater beach about 2PM and were met with a light northeast wind but that was OK. I had the Weasel and the Alula. Both nice light air planes. Plus, the wind-chill was almost nonexistant.

I flew the Weasel first and there was enough wind, probably about 7 or 8 MPH, for loops and rolls. Mostly I just did a bunch of close to the lip flying using a sign and a weed for turn points on a mini race course.

Mirko tried his 100-inch ASW 27 but there just was not quite enough for it to fly.

Next I flew the Alula. One of the reasons I got this plane was to see if it is better in light air at the slope than the Weasel and today was a good day to try the comparison.

Mirko was clicking away like mad with my Nikon D100.

SkyKing RC Products Lost Model Locator

What a cool device for your RC sailplane! It’s a low-voltage indicator and a lost model locator all in one. If you fly where the trees live this will be a life saver!

SkyKing RC Products Lost Model Locator

SkyKing RC Products Reintroduces the Harris Nelson Spyder

See the story at: Harris Nelson Spyder

Check out the Number One Slope Soaring web site in the world!

Check out my web site about radio control slope soaring, slopeflyer.com. I am using a nifty content management system to run slopeflyer.com called Article Manager. Nice control, static pages, easy to edit templates, really neat. Check it at interactivetools.com

2005 Midwest Slope Challenge Dates Set

The dates for the 2005 edition of the MWSC are June 9th thru 12th, 2005.

See more at Midwest Slope Challenge.