Ellenville worked!

Flying Ellenville November 2006

To everyone's surprise Ellenville worked extremely well this sunless weekend! The sky was nearly constantly clogged with grey clouds, patches of sun would quickly come and go and despite all this everyone enjoyed hours of soaring, thermalling(!) and bits of acro - sporadically performed by yours truly. Now, let me explain the acro bit - all was done with at least 500 meters of ground clearance and was limited to wingovers, SATs and asymetric spirals. The latter two maneuvers were used, by in large for the sake of rapid and safe descent in occasionally trashy air. And wingovers... well, they are wingovers! How can you NOT want to do them! I am still quite convinced that acro over ground is a bad idea but when given plenty of altitude and limited to maneuvers one has had a chance to practice over water dozens of times... Anyhow, I felt comfortable with my limited selection and did everything far from other aircraft to ensure the largest margin of safety.

All that said - 5 flights, 6 hours, 2 mini XC - one over the crest of the hill (finally!) landing just past Pine Bush - a mere 11.5 km SE from launch and the other about 8 km NW of launch. Though these distance ANYWHERE ELSE sound minuscule for Ellenville paragliding this ain't bad. Mind you, we are taking off into a narrow valley without usable landing zones for 1-2 kilometer stretches in some directions off a 400 meter hill so - don't complain :-) The funny part of the little XC - destination - Federal Prison. While flying over the main prison building saw a large baseball field just next to the prison. Luckily on the second pass I noticed the prison guard towers and the wall that was not visible from the particular vantage point off the top of the ridge. Smart application of a speed bar and a quick run back to the mountain saved me MUCH of explaining I would have had to do! Landed in a small airport nearby, waited for a HG pilot Stan to land and with his wife's rapid retrieval made it back to the mountain for another hour of flying. Great, though unexpected flying weekend!