Off again into the blue, blue skies over Minden.
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…
Off again into the blue, blue skies over Minden.
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 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.
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:
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
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.
A couple things from Day 2 that I didn’t fit into theĀ earlier post:
Today’s contest gave me what was probably the most amazing flight I have ever experienced in any airplane. We flew right over the Sierras. Continue reading
Here is an 8x sped-up YouTube video of us flying over the White Mountains near Bishop, CA. If you freeze frames, you might be able to see YO flying alongside us…
While we were flying, Mike remarked about what a privilege it was to have the experience of flying over such amazing scenery. No doubt—I don’t think I’ll ever forget it!
Today was the first contest day of the 2012 US Open Class Nationals!