Gliders > Slope Soaring
Hello from the U.S.
Freedom Flyer:
Thanks Alan,
Always great to make new acquaintances, I'm enjoying your guys forum, and am in awe of the size of the slopes over there. I just can't imagine flying on a slope so large. Someday maybe =P~ =P~ .
We do have a valley about 150 miles from where I live called the Beartooth Highway that I tried to fly this last summer. From the valley floor to the top of the pass is 5447 ft, making the top of the pass 10,947 feet. But go figure, I took several planes along and there was no wind. My wife and I were on an anniversary trip, I hung around for nearly 3 hours hoping for wind, nothing! Maybe next time through. You should Google it, it is quite beautiful as are the two National parks we have in our state as well, Yellowstone and Glacier National parks. I'll have to be happy with what we have around here. :D
We do have a lot of blue sky, our state is known as Big Sky Country, and we even have a little community 45 miles from us called Big Sky, one of the best ski resorts (Lone Mountain) in the Nation is 45 miles out our Back door. Too bad I don't ski :oops:, too expensive :(. Lots of beauty around us, just not the huge flat faced hills of Ireland. Another place on our list My wife and I would like to visit. Thanks for the post Tracy. FF
Freedom Flyer:
Gerry,
I've been looking around the forum and Google Earthed some of the cities you gents are from to get a lay of the land. What a beautiful country you live. I've got a friend who was a missionary there in Drewstown. He left there about 10 years ago but was there for about 7 years. He liked it very much.
I was also looking at the size of the country, square miles and such. Having grown up in Montana, I've always known that our state is the 4th largest in our Nation, Alaska of course being the Largest. But when I look at the different sizes of whole countries, it makes me realize how big our state is.
Montana is 145,545 sq. miles, you could fit 4.5 Irelands within our state borders, and 1.8 Great Britains within our state borders. Yet Ireland has 4.6 times as many people and Great Britain has 62 times as many people. We just broke the 1 million population mark. So there's only 1 million people spread out over 145,545 square miles. That's why there's only 3 people that fly on our slope :shock: , pretty crazy huh? I think if we really looked here in the valley we might be able to find some college kids that fly sailplanes but there just doesn't seem to be anyone else around, Kind of sad really. Oh well, we keep trying to convert some of these electric guys from the dark side :P :P :P . I think the hard part for them is it's a 35 mile drive to the slope, when they can go down to the local park and fly. We keep telling them to bring their electrics along, if the wind isn't blowing they've got something to fly. :). Well, I've rambled enough for now, I need to go cut up my deer. FF
gerryb:
hi tracy,
that sure is some size of real estate!! no problem finding a nice, quiet corner for yourself if you nee a bit of peace.
here in ireland, if you live anywhere in the midlands, you can be on almost any coast in about 2-21/2 hours easy.
because ireland is such a hilly place, most of our gliding is slope soaring.
i was on tountinna today with a new glider. most enjoyable it was too. the glider is a ka-3 to 1/4 scale which i built from a short kit supplied by fred. i hope to have photos up soon.
tountinna isn't such a big place as you might think, but it has good slopes facing n through w onto s. landing areas are all heather. an added bonus for us is the road all the way to the top. ideal, as several of our members are no longer in the freshness of youth and don't really fancy long uphill climbs. facing all of us, i suppose.
Happy Days:
Hey Gerry, you flew your new Ka?….and it was “most enjoyable” (Sounds like a typical English understatement to me) So how did it fly?
We want to know!
I was up on the Big L today. (Mount Lienster for the benefit for our new friends.) It had been cloud bound all morning but it cleared around midday. I got onto the west slope at around 1pm,………….and the wind dropped! Can you believe it, :twisted: ………. what a bummer. :cry:
Managed to scratch around finding little pockets of lift with the Phase 6 ( controls set to max camber) but as the wind dropped further I gave up after half an hour. :!:
Only light winds forecast for the next few days. Time to revert to models with propellers me thinks.
Tracy,……..I think life teaches us all different things as we each walk our weary paths, and one thing I’ve learnt is that bigger isn’t necessarily better by any means. Here’s a case in point.
Not far from me are some sand dunes. They’re only about 20 - 40 feet high but I’ve spent many hours enjoying myself flying off of them. They’re quite challenging actually because the lift zone is rather narrow.
It’s all a matter of horses for courses, of course, but as a (drunk) young lady once told me, “Enjoyment has nothing to do with the size of the ship,…..but the motion of the ocean!” :lol:
Save me a piece of Venison. I like mine cooked ‘medium’. yum yum! :D
Ireland,……..Land of a thousand Welcomes!
Keith
Freedom Flyer:
Alan,
I'm sorry I got you mixed up with someone else :oops: :oops: :oops: .
Keith,
The deer Tastes great :D I might try for one more this weekend, last weekend for the weapons restricted area. I think I'll ask before I post, but I have a couple of pics of my two boys with their first deer, okay to post those? I did on one forum in Australia and go a lot of back lash for it, it seems to make some squeemish :-& :-& :-& :-& FF
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