http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=30971
Zach Marzec
Jim Rooney - 2013/02/16 05:05:41 UTC
My general rule is "no funky shit". I don't like people reinventing the wheel and I don't like test pilots. Have I towed a few test pilots? Yup. Have I towed them in anything but very controlled conditions? Nope. It's a damn high bar. I've told more to piss off than I've told yes. I'll give you an example... I towed a guy with the early version of the new Lookout release. But the Tad-o-link? Nope.
08-19
http://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5277/30076449505_1f6ed2f804_o.png
Notice how NOBODY in the enemy camp - meaning pretty much everyone in the sport and not a Kite Strings member - has ever done a goddam thing to get a significantly better anything airborne?
The gliders themselves... Weightshift controlled foldable flying wings. Show me anything flying today that couldn't have been engineered decades ago with enough concentration of brains and resources. Ignore stuff like carbon and sail materials developed for and by other applications and industries. (Ditto for the electronics spawned by the digital revolution.)
We've got high tech XC racing harnesses which are nice for winning comps but prevent one from balling up to prevent tumbles and parachutes from being deployed after the tumbles that couldn't be prevented have turned everything to airborne wreckage.
The fuckin' Dragonfly was designed a bit shy of three decades ago as a flying focal point of a safe towing system - for anyone upwind of the tow mast breakaway. And fuck anybody and everybody on the downwind end.
Western hang gliding has bent over backwards to make and keep towing equipment as shitty and lethal as subhumanly possible.
When we taught "students" on the dunes in the early Eighties we had them proning out within a fraction of a second of becoming airborne. And now Joe Greblo has his victims logging forty Kagel hours before they're permitted to touch the control bar.
What a breath of fresh air. Pity we had to go well outside of hang gliding proper to get it.
Open phones...
Sunday afternoon play then dinner around the corner at the Galway Bay Irish pub in the back room. Then water started dripping in from multiple points above. I volunteered to take the umbrella and retrieve the car from a Saint John's College lot.
The rain was biblical times five and the umbrella started feeling a lot like a lightning rod. Water was exploding from downspouts and I needed to plot courses to stay in reasonably shallow areas. Things dialed back to lightish rain just before I got to the car but cycled way up and down during the drive home.
From where I was taking my stroll, Ellicott City lies a bit under 26 crow flight miles northwest on the Patapsco River - which becomes Baltimore Harbor as it enters the Chesapeake estuary. It got the shit ripped out of it - again. One Good Samaritan sucked under and not seen again. Second thousand year flood in less than two years. Obviously nothing to do with all the CO2 we keep pumping into the atmosphere though. Shit just happens sometimes. Frequently.
And speaking of pumping CO2 into the atmosphere... Boarding for Anchorage in another day and a half. Yours Truly and what he'll be wearing (including the Canon 10x42s), backpack, laptop case for carry-on, a couple of hundred centimeter Manfrotto tripod bags precision packed to the gills I'm hoping to be able to gate check. I've written myself a five page operator's manual for inventorying, packing, organizing everything. Stomach feels like I'm going on my first combat mission.
Just checked the ten day forecast for Nome though. Up until now I'd seen nothing but rain for our scheduled 06/02-06 Seward Peninsula expedition. But now we're down to just partly cloudy with ten percent chance of precipitation. I can so live with that.
I've studied the crap outta that peninsula, our routes into it, points of interest, likely critters - and was looking forward to it more than any other leg of the tour and majorly bummed out by the prospect of nonstop rain. The Arctic Circle grazes the northern extremity of the peninsula and we should max out to within eighty miles of it - farthest north I'll have ever been and the sun won't be very low behind the horizon at midnight in the coming weeks.
Just past midnight here in the Eastern Daylight Time Zone. Better sign off and get back into gearing up mode. I'll have internet access on and off until return late on 06/19 so should at least be able to keep an eye on things - Grizzlies, Gray Wolves, mosquitos permitting.
