This month BASH Sunday dawned cloudy. A storm front was moving through. As I
drove to Banos, I noticed that the wind mills on the Altamont pass were idle.
None were turning, drat. But I remained hopeful. We've been given flyable wind
for 22 months!
I arrived at Banos to light rain and, sure enough, plenty of south east wind.
Luckily, the road to the west side of the park was open and I was able to
drive right to the typical storm slope (the one under the 230KV power lines).
Amazingly, I saw no other pilots. After an hour I found the guys. They were at
a spot I'd never tried before. It was tucked in the back of the park, past the
camp ground about half mile on a dirt road. Many interesting spots on that
side of the lake that will be great in south winds.
At about 1:00 the rain stopped. Woohoo!
Because of the storm conditions we changed slopes many times. I put over 40
miles on my car just driving around the park!
We had some visiting dignitaries. A big hello to Dave Reese and Pat Bowman.
Both great guys who made the day even more fun. BTW, don't ever try to fly
Dave's planes. He sets them up very TWITCHY!
This month was the month of Dynamic Soaring. Because of the east wind one of
the usual slopes had a good boundary layer and the guys really cranked it up!
Dave Reese cut some fine circles with a Synergy and Mickey Crowley got an old
Vindicator really ripping. This was impressive stuff. Dave's license plate
frame says it well:
DS
It will change your life.
Most dynamic though was flown with foamies. It was amazing how many times
those poor things thumped into the ground. Charlie had his new foamie from Tom
Copp called the Bandit and it was impressive. It's actually quite light and
quite a departure from the typical flying wing design but it DS'ed VERY well.
Charlie flew it mercilessly and really got it screaming. It was doing great
but eventually got tired of the shenanigans and began to flutter. Not too
badly at first. It did it's job and provided plenty of warning but Charlie
didn't want to listen. He was liking it. He played with the flutter as it
changed from tip flutter to whole wing flutter and just kept cranking it
harder. Finally the wing folded. But it's quite fixable, I'm sure we'll see
the Bandit again.
We had a good illustration of the potential pitfalls of DS. We had a Vision
transmitter explode. Well, actually, it was exploded. Wasn't the transmitter's
fault. :-) A foamie was making the circle and just after bouncing off the
shear boundary happened to be just a little too low. It was traveling downward
and missed another pilot's face by inches. Unfortunately, it center punched
his transmitter. POW! The transmitter flew out of the pilots hands and down
the slope. The case was broken, switches broken, etc.... One of the switches
was actually embedded in the plane. Icky but no injuries.
BASH Enterprises had another new creation. A Beechcraft Staggerwing. This was
the absolute coolest! It was most impressive the way the guys in the combat
furball avoided hitting it while it was trimmed and tested. They were quite
polite until the OK was given. They it was THE target. Any time I was trying
to find someone I only had to find the Bipe and the odds were good that my
intended target was nearby.
One thing we found puzzling. Once the Stagger was trimmed and flying well, we
were surprised to find when we rolled it inverted it would RISE. This was very
surprising. You actually had to PULL the stick to keep the plane level. If
anyone has any possible explanations I'd sure be interested.
I was disappointed by some strange radio interference even though there was
no one else on my channel. I was grounded at 2 of the 3 sites we flew, ARGH!
At one site, with my transmitter off, my plane was actually following another
transmitter's signal. With my transmitter on I would loose control once it was
about 50yards away. A tremendous thank you to Ed Hipp who retrieved my plane
after it crashed way down the hill. If it wasn't for you Ed I'd still be on
that hill. I owe you, buddy.
I tried to localize the offending transmitter that was causing the problem
but couldn't. It may have been a combination effect but I really have no idea.
First time this has happened to me. Weird. Fortunately, when I was grounded
due to interference, guys kept handing me transmitters, "Here fly this". I
love these guys.
The weather was a bit of a surprise to several of us. We had been blessed with
warm weather the past month and had gotten used to it. Several were
underdressed and got a bit cold. The trip to the official BASH diner though
warmed us up. We had 12 folks at dinner and in true BASHer tradition most had
milk shakes!
Bill Swingle
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Pleasanton, CA
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