Hmm, sick day

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.