The flying season in Santa Barbara runs Fall through Spring. Now
is the time for the season to start, and this week we had a least three stellar
days with pilots over 5,000'. But the weekend was not as stellar.


We went back to Eliminator with Anne-Odile, Gil, Terry, John Greynald. Later
Dick and Dave Saffold showed up. When we got to launch it was coming up nicely.
Not strong, nor consistent, but it was there an straight in. Unfortunately, it
was quite warm at launch and cold is better on this south facing mountain side.


By the time we had set up the wind started coming out of the east (left) and
then northeast (over the back). The wind talker was talking about increasing
winds while earlier in the day it had spoken of decreasing east winds. Still
there were some launchable up cycles and John took off.


He hung in below launch on the right ridge for quite a while before landing at
upper Parma. In the meantime a paraglider pilot launched and got trashed in the
lee of the left hand (east) ridge and had to land at the first bail out field
(not really used by hang gliders any more). They did it for the rest of us and
we packed it in.


A few other pilots who had come up behind us had gone over to Back of the Rack
to deal with the east wind. They got off and got beat up. JR got to 4,700' test
flying the new Wills Wing T2 with the UV cloth (see
www.willswing.com). It was the 144 model
and he really liked it, especially as it penetrated so well to the beach for a
landing later.


At 172-182 pounds he is worried about buying a glider that won't stay up in the
lightest of lift. He wonders if he should continue to buy gliders that are too
big for him. Feel the burn.


The unemployed continue to hang out here in expensive Santa Barbara just for the
super convenient hang gliding ten minutes from their homes. They are all ready
to give it a try again tomorrow. I hope things improve as we settle back in here
at Carpinteria Beach.