WALTER's AIR SAILING REPORT

I'll jump on the band wagon too even though my flight was with an Air Sailing Pegase glider.

Last Thursday Sep 27th I took off around 1:30PM from Air Sailing and headed to Truckee. It was mostly a blue day but there were some clouds around Lake Tahoe. I headed towards the West side of Verdi trying to stay over the mountains and under some clouds. This way I moved towards Truckee between 11,000 and 13,000 feet. From there I went around Mount Rose and headed towards Carson City, heading South over the mountain towards Minden as I found a street of clouds and was able to pretty much fly straight using the dolphing technique. From MInden I headed back north and quickly reached Reno at the edge of the mountains before crossing the highway I-80 valley which I heard can have a lot of sink. So, I wanted to make sure I was high enough to reach Reno Stead with plenty of altitude. Being at about 10,000 feet I thought (maybe wrongly) that I needed to gain more altitude but the day seemed to be weakining and I was getting pretty low over the mountains at which point I thought I might have to land in Reno. I got in touch with Oakland Center indicating I might need to land in Reno and they transferred me to the Reno tower. Reno gave me 16R to land but I obviously wasn't ready to give up as I was just over 8,000 feet. As I headed towards the airport I finally found some lift I could scratch in and was able to stay West of the airport trying to gain altitude, already within Class C airspace. They switched me to runway 7 and asked if I was motorized. They allowed me to stay West of the airport and try to save my flight and even gave me a transponder code,  I was really impressed how helpful and patient they were, asking if I needed help getting the glider off the runway in Reno. I got back up to about 10,000 when I decided to head north towards Reno Stead where I arrived with plenty of altitude and finding some more lift which allowed me to head back to Air Sailing. Reno Tower in conjunction with Oakland Center provided me the luxury of flight following as I headed to the North. These guys are good!

I had heard that Gatorade G2 was a good drink to take as it replenishes your electrolytes without all the sugar. I picked some up at Safeway before heading to the airport that day and made the mistake of only taking that but no water. I was surprised how early I was feeling my mouth completely dry and eager to drink water. It also didn't do too well to my stomach. As I was around Reno Stead I wasn't so sure I was going to be able to make it back to Air Sailing without getting very sick. Well, I decided it was better to use my hat as a bag and relieve the symptoms before having to land while feeling really bad. Summary: I won't take only Gatorade G2 next time and will make sure I bring some water.

The flight was just over 3 hours as I covered 230km. Flight trace can be found at http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?dsId=2759233.

One other thing I really enjoyed about this flight was setting up my Oudie to not only track my destination, but also to always have on the screen the closest airport and the closest land out place (many times the closest airport was also the closest land out, but not always). This gave me quite a bit of confidence and allowed me to feel quite safe as I wondered out of my home airport. I'm sure you guys can teach me a lot more on how to set the Oudie with even more options, which I am more than willing to listen to.

Walter