Short Divide Delivers!

Tanner (13) finally got his first hour of airtime yesterday with me as the Short Divide delivered another magical late-season afternoon flight. With the mid-November dearth of available daylight hours, we arrived by about 1:45 and were set up, pre-flighted, and double-hang-checked by 2:30. During set-up Tanner was full of questions about the glider, harness, launch, landing, and what he was supposed to do during flight. I answered all of his questions, but I could tell he was still a bit apprehensive about the unknown.

Conditions on launch were perfect, with a pre-frontal sw wind at 18-20, mostly sunny with a few high-wispies, and about 65 degrees. It was a beautiful Fall day, with the sw flow finally scouring out the valley inversion which had set up the last 2 weeks. A number of the farmers in the valley below were burning off stubble, providing ample wind indicators.

We walked out to launch and positioned the glider at the top of the "slot". We did not linger more than a minute to get wings level and neutral, checked for any air traffic (out of habit) ..."Clear!...Walk....Jog"... Going UP! The launch was near perfect, and I proned out immediately as Tanner exclaimed,

"Oh My GOSH!! It's a LONG way UP Here!!!!" I agreed with him, and reminded him to prone out in his stirrup, which he did - after I told him it was OK to look down and back to locate it :-]

Conditions were smoooooooth and strong - but I still had ample penetration. With Tanner in tandem, we hooked in at 267 lbs, which I could tell, was at the top end of the desired wing loading for "Ol' Sport." I still felt comfortable with plenty of control, and appreciated the increased glide on a windy day like today. I noticed that it did want to "wind up" after entering a turn, but a timely corrective input coordinated the turn nicely.

We soared the lower ridge at about 300' over launch for about 15 minutes, until I found some lift in front of the tower and slowly crabbed over to the face of Clarkston Peak, where we found the anticipated lift which allowed us to steadily "climb the mountain". We soon topped out above the peak and could see over the back into the next valley. We then crossed the small valley to the west and soon climbed out over Gunsight Peak, topping out at 8,500' - about 4,000' above the valley!

From there we could see over a couple of small mountain ranges to the sw as the afternoon sun reflected off of the Great Salt Lake in the distance toward the Nevada border. I took some pictures and let Tanner "drive" for a while, as we shared the air with a red-tailed hawk.

Tanner "Crankin' & Bankin'!"

It was noticeably about 25 degrees cooler at this altitude, so we pointed back toward Clarkston Peak. Then we noticed 2 large raptors at the same altitude about 40 yards in front of us. We approached from their 6 O'clock, and came within 10' undetected, at which point one of them dove below us, and the other suddenly banked up and showed us the underside of his wings and his big talons before flying off to the side!

About 30 seconds later one of them took us by surprise as he suddenly came from behind and appeared about 6' to the right of me, between my side wire and the wing tip! It was an incredible close-up in-flight view, but I was not quick enough to get a picture until he had raced ahead of us about 20' away.

We then flew through the gap and began our gradual descent just north of Clarkston proper. The welcome warmer air was nice as we were rocked around just a bit by some mild lee side turbulence, which settled down before we set up our final approach as we went upright. We came in with plenty of speed, but being used to a much lighter wing loading, I waited a half-second too long to flare, resulting in a gentle, up-slope belly-landing. Not the prettiest, but safe, with no whack - although next tandem flight I think I'll put my "big wheels " on :-)

Airtime: 1 Hour 7 minutes x 2!