Long flights at Prevost

Click photo for more imagesShabe reports:
"What a day; challenging but gratifying. Some of the crew had one long flight (Charlie and Rick at 3 hours plus) while Norm was happy with his return to the air before things got rough. Merwan and I had 2 flights each.
Congrats to Merwan who had not flown for more than a year and logged many low saves in his hour-plus second flight. Jonathan learned a lot by just being there; thanks for the drive, Jonathan Q.C. (soon to be). Spicy conditions over all for sure."

Rick reports:
"I met up with Shabe and Merwan at the Home Depot in hopes of some great flying at Prevost and boy did we get it. Once we arrived at the mountain we met up with Charlie and Norm, loaded up Ridgeline and headed up. We could already see a couple of glider working the Carin so it was looking good.

The previous day was an early bird day which left some pilots hanging out in the North winds. Eager to make up for the previous days miss Shabe, Merwan, and Norm were quick to set up on middle. Cycles were nice with a slight East component but all had no problems launching for their first flight. Charlie and I decided to use main launch instead. Charlie was quick to set up and was off first.
"I've only got an hour before I have to leave for father's day" he said before he launched, "So I'll see you in the skies".

After a few line snags on main I got a nice cycle and took to the skies. At this point there we 3-5 gliders already in the air working the plentiful lift. The Carin seemed like a good place to start so I headed east, found a nice thermal just out in front and I was on my way to could base to join Super Dave and Charlie who were already high chasing each other in circles. It soon became evident that the lift was strong and wide spread and I could see Charlie quickly heading away from Prevost towards Mt. Sicker. I watched as he sank most of the way there but had a beautiful low save and worked his way back up over the mountain and returned to Prevost where he would play for a while longer before heading out. Nice work!

Around this time the boys were back for a second flight joined by a few more paragliders and 2-3 hang gliders. Everyone was making good use of the day. Around the two hour mark Merwan joined me as he made a low save and boated around with me for over an hour. Nice work for his first flight in many months. Just over the three hour mark I was starting to get pretty tired so I opted to land and meet up with Heather who was hoping to do a little kiting at Dallas.

In the end everyone got their fill and then some and there were still a few pilots on launch looking for a little more."