Gridding up: it’s the final day of the 2012 US Open Class Nationals.
Author Archives: tom
Day 8 at Minden
Off again into the blue, blue skies over Minden.
Photo by Stewart Tattersall
What a great photo—thanks, Stewart! Unfortunately, this photo also shows the moment when JOY was experiencing some of the best lift it would see all day…
Day 7 at Minden
Today’s weather was low and slow, allowing for plenty of dramatic images and video of rocks.
If only I had held the camera for a profile shot—you would have been able to see all of JOY’s shadow on Mount Patterson, not just half. Ah well.
Luckily, my video camera was working today. To see some of what I recorded, read on… Continue reading
Rest day!
After six intense days of flying, the contest organizers decided to declare Monday a rest day. So, naturally, team JOY went on a three hour drive down to Yosemite to see it from the ground. Here are some photos I took with my Android phone’s built-in panorama functionality, which admittedly isn’t the very best. Click to enlarge if you want.
1. Descending north on 395, a viewpoint overlooking Mono Lake:
Day 5 at Minden
Day 5 (remember, we’re counting from 0 on this blog; it’s the sixth day of racing). It got windy, but that didn’t keep us out of the air, or these birds for that matter (you may have to click to see them).
We spotted those guys northbound while flying south to Desert Creek Peak at the end of today’s task.
Awesome final glide photo
Check out Rick Indrebo final gliding into the finish after the fifth day’s task! We ended at the same time, from roughly the same direction, so we went in side-by-side. I shot this photo, which you should click to view full-size:
Day 4 at Minden
Q: What’s better than one amazing soaring flight over the Sierras?
A: Two of them.
There is a spectacular video for those who Continue reading
Day 2 at Minden: YouTube video!
At last—here is an overview video of Day 2 at Minden! We’ve been flying with a GoPro camera suction-cupped to the canopy, and occasionally it manages to work. On a four hour task, it can just barely capture the whole thing before we land.
That’s a lot of video, so I wrote a program that pulls out three second clips from every two minutes of footage, then joins them together. You can spot all kinds of interesting stuff in this summary video: soaring near virga, Mono Lake, the Sierra Crest, and more. Enjoy!
With luck, I’ll have another video like this one for today’s task.
Leftovers from Day 2
A couple things from Day 2 that I didn’t fit into the earlier post:
