Drove with glider from Truckee to Ely. I'll spend three days here, and then move on to Parowan camp as I did last year (see links under Parowan Trip 2008 on the right). It was rather long 7-hour drive, but thanks to scenic roads and music, time passed quickly. Arrived at Ely around 7:30pm. Several familiar and new glider pilots were having dinner at the hanger, and gave me a warm welcome. According to them, the condition was not good today, and nobody flew. It looks like that is the case for tomorrow, but well, I need a rest, too. To name a few, Ramy Yanetz, Mitch Polinski, and Russ&Lynn Owens are here.
Drove 357 miles
Click here to view photos taken on the road. They all look the same? Yes, because the road looked the same all the way. Compare this photo with this one taken last year. Both were taken at the same gas station in Austin. Gas prices surely look much more peaceful this year.
According to the forecast, today was supposed to be a booming day. However, as soon as the day started (or, didn't start), it showed a sign of a marginal day. There were no clouds in the vicinity of Truckee, and only after I launched I saw clouds far east, over Pine Nuts mountains and south of it. Clouds did look good, and blue thermals over the airport quickly took me to nearly 12,000ft. I was still dreaming of Mt. Whitney at that time. But when I headed Mt. Rose to get another lift before heading to Pine Nuts.. there was nothing there. I sled down to 10,000ft, and was barely maintaining the altitude. I went back and forth over the ridge between Mt. Rose and Lake Tahoe, hoping those exposed rocks on the ridge popped out a strong lift or bubble or anything. After spending seemingly forever time, there it was, I hit a solid core, and was back up to 11,800ft. This was sort of minimum altitude to commit to Pine Nuts. But at that time, my computer indicated 20kts of wind from the west, to I guessed that there may be a wave east side of Mt. Rose. So, I decided to go. Shortly after I passed the summit, I was in the arms of a steady 5-7 kts quiet sink. This was actually encouraging to me, because it was clearly a sign of wave. I kept penetrating the sink (thank god I had water today!), and finally the vario turned plus when I came down to 10,500ft. It was more like a wavelet instead of wave, but nice 3-5 kts lift brought me up to 14,000ft. From there to Pine Nuts was just a straight flight, and Pine Nuts did treat me with a 12kts thermal which I deserved. I followed the ridge, and got up to 17,000ft over Mt. Siegel. At that time, I think I was still dreaming of Mt. Whitney.
However, as I extended my trip to the south, virgas gradually came into my sight. Firstly, they seemed to be happening in only spotted areas, but as I approach them, it became clear that they formed a wall to block be going south.
Wall of virga north of Mono Lake
Without much choices, I headed as eastern as I could, turned Mt. Grant, headed as north as I could, turned before Churchill restricted area, then flew back to Truckee. After all, it was a 362km flight.
Today was supposed to be better than yesterday, so I put water on my glider. I filled up both wings, and then did the same to the tail tank only to find that I couldn't close the valve. All water in the tail tank would dump in a minute. Without compensating the balance with water in tail, I couldn't fly with water, so I dumped everything after trying to figure out what was wrong for good 1 hour.
Then, I got sick as soon as I passed 13,000ft in the first thermal. I thew up twice on my way to Pine Nuts. I also had headache, and my fingers started to paralyze (but were pink, not purple), so I decided to go back to Truckee. These are typical symptoms of hypoxia, but I was using oxygen, and was well hydrated, too. When this happens, this usually happens on the first day after coming up to Truckee from bay area. I had a good sleep last night. Not sure why.
I missed a good day, but on the positive side, I had a plenty of time to troubleshoot the water ballast problem, and was able to fix it. See the photo below. The two white plastic clamps were too tight, and giving the cable slightly more tension than it needed. This subtle increase in the tension kept the tail tank valve open. These clamps were replaced after they broke in a wave flight last year.
In the evening, I had a wonderful dinner with Richard, Tony, and his wife Nancy.
Flew about 400km in 5 hours at Truckee, and took a lot of photos using new camera. I flew over Yosemite National Park, and tried to fly over Half Dome, but couldn't quite make it because there weren't enough lift near there and there aren't any landable places. But it was a very good day. I made it to 18,000 ft even though the forecast said that the thermal top was 15,000ft. I turned back at 4:30pm, which turned out to be a bit too late, and ended up landing on Carson City airport. But I was still happy about a great flight.
Flew about 230km at Truckee. This was my first flight at Truckee in this season. There were clouds all over the place like herd of sheep, but the cloudbase was low (12,000ft), and couldn't go too far. I went north towards Mt. Lassen, but the northern I went, the cloudbase got lower and lower. I finally turned around east of Quincy. Then, I found that I had only half of the sheep I saw on my way. All good sheep went home, and only wicked ones were left. They were deceiving, and there weren't necessarily thermals beneath it. Thank god they didn't piss (rain) on me!
After using Panasonic Lumix FX35 for one season and taking 1000+ photos, I decided to upgrade it to something more serious. FX35 is a good camera, but I wanted to improve the following three points.
Suppressing reflections on the canopy Reflections on the canopy becomes an issue when you fly under direct sunlight and have bright materials inside cockpit such as light color shirts and maps. Though sometimes it has an interesting effect, in general it's better not to have it. A polarizing filter (PL filter) can help this. Update: It turned out that PL filter does not help. It creates dark lines on the canopy no matter how you rotate the filter. See this album.
Better dynamic range Since FX35's dynamic range isn't too great (which is typical for point-and-shoot cameras), photos sometimes have "blown-out highlights" on white parts such as top of clouds or wings, or "crushed blacks" on dark part such as shade under clouds.
Even-wider-angle lens FX35's 24mm lens (35mm equivalent) is very useful, but I wanted to try something even wider in places like Grand Canyon.
My first candidate was Panasonic Lumix G1. It's an interchangeable-lens camera in micro four thirds category. It solves all three problems mentioned above, but a bit too bulky to fly with, and lacks video shooting capability (its enhanced version GH1 can shoot videos).
So, my pick was Panasonic Lumix LX3. This is one of the top-of-the-line cameras in this category. If this doesn't work, I really have to start thinking about bigger and heavier DSLRs.
Along with the camera, I also bought a Hoya Multi-Coat circular polarizing filter and a wide angle conversion lens DMW-LW46. This conversion lens gives me 18mm view angle at the widest.
I also bought a couple of extra batteries and a charger that doubles as AC charger and car charger on Ebay, and a remote lease adapter from this site.
I also considered Canon PowerShot G10, but Lumix won my bid because of its smaller size, wider lens (24mm v.s. 28mm), and because Lumix comes in gray. G10 has nice remote release options including wireless one, though.
Olympus's new micro four thirds camera may be a good choice. It's said to be announced on June 15, 2009, and be on the market by July, 2009.
Panasonic Lumix ZS3 may be a good candidate if I didn't care filters and other lens accessories. Someone posted a good quality video shot from glider on YouTube. This looks much better than what I shot with FX35.
Update: Sample photos and videos
I brought LX3 with me for the 80-day long gliding trip this summer. Here are some photos and videos I took with LX3 during the trip.
1. LX3 + DMW-LW46 at 18mm. This is the widest angle possible with this combination of camera and lens. This photo was taken over Capitol Reef National Park in Utah.
Click here to download the original JPEG file (4.4MB). Click here to view more photos of this flight. Click here to read my notes about this flight. Click here to view the GPS log of this flight on OLC.
2. LX3 at 60mm. This is the longest zoom angle possible with this camera. This photo was taken at the same place as above.
Click here to download the original JPEG file (4.5MB).
3. A HD (720p) video shot by LX3 + DMW-LW46 at 18mm. This shot was taken over Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.
Click here to download the original video (coming soon). Click here to view photos of this flight. Click here to read my notes about this flight. Click here to view the GPS log of this flight on OLC.
4. A non-HD (480p) video shot by LX3 + DMW-LW46 at 18mm. This shot was taken at King Mountain glider park in Idaho.
Click here to download the original video (coming soon). Click here to view more photos of King Mountain. Click here to read my notes about this flight. Click here to view the GPS log of this flight on OLC.
Drove 357 miles
