Cherokee Driver:

Nice Flight! But for those damned instrument thingies!
At least you should know that you aren't the first
to make a successful flight, only to find out afterwards
that the baro failed (or the pilot forgot to turn on
the baro, or the pilot forgot to properly declare the
flight as flown in the whiz-bang electrical digital
gps thingie.)

You'll have the badges soon!

Ray Lovinggood

At 05:00 10 May 2007, wrote:
made a valiant attempt at silver distance/altitude
today. managed to
wrangle a towpilot and got a launch about 2 PM. altitude
and the 50
km (w/1% rule factored) were the goal. I had done
the math and knew
that from a 2000 foot tow at Ames a flight to Grinnel
Regional Airport
would be sufficient for the badge. So I alerted the
crew that I would
set out that way. The flight was pretty uneventful.
I never really
got below 4000 AGL until I got to the airport and worked
some nice
lift in the 5-700 fpm range. didnt quite make cloudbase
at my highest
altitude of around 7000 msl. I made sure to fly conservatively
and
keep the altitude up, as this was one of my last chances
to get the
silver badge out of the way so I could fly the Region
7 Sports contest
at the end of the month. After a nice landing in Grinnel
I pulled the
barograph out to look at it and it was messed up.
GRRrRRRrrRRR.
another silver flight dashed by the stupid barograph.
I swear this
badge is more about having either a) the bling to buy
a datalogger or
b) the patience to deal with a barograph. so long
story short the
trace was worthless. seems the paper rubbed and stopped
the drum from
turning and thats all she wrote. to add insult to
injury, Paul Remde
called me 10 minutes after landing to notify me I was
off the waiting
list and in the contest. I said OK but ive still got
to finish
Silver, will let you know by the end of the week.
So the BLIPMAPs
look good for tomorrow as well. I think im going to
try to head
north, and im taking no fewer than 2 barographs to
make sure that one
of them works. Will report back...