Gordy Stahl, Ingo Donasch and myself planned to try for our LSF 5 Goal and Return flights at Kennyworld on Dec 12th or 13th. The weather forecast all week indicated that we would be in for a hot day with record temps in Ocala of 84 degrees. The wind was going to be swinging from east to west during the day at a strength of around 8 mph to 12 mph. Though not ideal wind the task was still doable so we set out on the Sunday to give it a try. Jody Miller came with us from Orlando and we were also joined by Art Scheurer at Kennyworld.
Unfortunately for us the entire XC attempt was going to be in vain because the weather forecasters got it entirely wrong. We were greeted in Kennyworld with overcast skys, cold wind and a cloud base of barely 600 feet. We didn’t see the sun all day and the buzzards were finding conditions tough. In fact when we were watching Buzzards successfully thermalling they were disappearing into cloud! It was a great opportunity for a dry run to test our equipment and planes. The old Vyger was assembled and flown a few times but the windy conditions were not her forte. I flew my High End for the first time and got some trimming and mode settings done on it. Ingo flew his Shadow a few times also to test the air. The biggest problem we had all day was that we needed much longer stakes to hold the turn around down in the loosely ploughed peanut field. The turnaround continued to pull out of the ground on any strong launches. We did have a fun day all round but we’ll need to try again with better weather conditions. Thanks to Jody and Art for being our loyal assistants.
Gordon
