It was a great weekend for soaring. It was a very eventful weekend with 15 year old Freddie Wendland getting his first solo flight in the USA. Freddie soloed a k13 in Germany a few weeks ago. A MUCH older, glider rated, Scott Crippen performed his first Ka7 solo flight Sunday after noon. We now have three club members checked out to solo the Ka7. Calvin Mayo managed to stay up Saturday afternoon for 1 hour and 7 minutes. Way to go Calvin! Calvin is a private pilot working on his glider rating. There were also a few low altitude (200'-300') simulated rope breaks on Saturday. That will get your heart pumping. :o)

I was able to catch the lucky tow Sunday afternoon. Tow pilot Monty Clark dropped me off near a nice thermal at 450 meters AGL (1,500'). I was able to take it up to the cloud base at 1,600 meters (5,248'). Frank says that's the highest his German glider has been over the USA so far. I already had a long ride last weekend so once I hit the clouds I started down so somebody else could go. She didn't want to leave so I did a few stalls and wing overs. Then I applied full spoilers at 100 kph to bring her down. I was up for 42 minutes.

We need to discuss a name for the club. I've been calling it Farmville Soaring but David Manning suggested "Down East Soaring". Once we nail that down I'll see about registering a domain name.

There will be flying again this Saturday (August 30th 10:00 - 6:00) and Sunday (1:00 - 6:00) so ya'll come on out and see what it's all about.

Rick