August 24, 2007 - Cedar Valley, Utah in my ASW-20B, One 1,400 ft tow, 3.0 hour flight.
It had been over a month since I flew my glider. Yikes! I have been flying power (Diamond Star DA-40) quite a bit and had come good flights. Today the winds were extremely strong gusting over 30 knots and even higher at altitude. The clouds were tempting a long flight but the winds just wouldn't let one happen. Too bad would have been a great day. Next time maybe.
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 August 25, 2007 - Cedar Valley, Utah in my ASW-20B, One 1,300 ft tow, 2.9 hour flight.
Because yesterday was so windy when I saw that today the winds would be much less I had to try it again. I ended up getting off really late (after 3pm) so it was going to be just a local flight. I ended up flying from Cedar Valley to Mount Pleasant airport to Mount Timpanogos to Lone Peak back home. Had a great time buzzing hikers and just having fun enjoying soaring.
A few days later I ended up chatting with Dale (who purchased my Phoebus) and he said that he and his wife had hiked Mount Timp a few days back and took pictures of me from the mountain. Wow! How cool. I had wondered if the people we pissed or thought my buzzing them was cool. He said that they were all pretty excited. One person announced that I was a remote control glider and argued with my friend for 5 minutes about it. I guess even though I was only a few hundred feet away they still couldn't put the glider in perspective. To give them credit the winds were pretty strong at 25+ knots and my ground speed was over 130 mph each time I passed them. I ended up getting a few cool pics of the flight. Fantastic surprise!
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September 1, 2007 - Cedar Valley, Utah in my ASW-20B, One 2,000 ft tow, 2.6 hour flight.
It was a beautiful late-summer Utah day for soaring. The winds were almost zero due to high pressure. It ended up being too stable to go anywhere though I tried and almost landed out. I headed towards Lone Peak and when I got there didn't find any ridge lift or thermals. I was concerned with the Class B airspace that starts at Lone Peak and heads north. I ended up going back west towards Cedar Valley and got REALLY low. I thermalled over the Cabela's parking lot at about 1,500 altitude and still having 14 miles to go to get back to the airport. I finally hooked a thermal at 1,000 ft elevation right over the Zuka juice building and slowly worked my way up heigh enough to make it back to the airport. This was really nerve wracking since this was right were lots of power plane traffic flies between Prove and the Salt Lake Valley. Scary save!
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September 27, 2007 - Cedar Valley, Utah in my ASW-20B, One 2,900 ft tow, 1.6 hour flight.
What a wonderful late-season soaring day. I just wanted to get up and play on the ridges in the mountain chain west of Cedar Valley and enjoy the changing colors. The lift was steady and easy with a western flow and I could play anywhere in the mountain chain I liked. I saw a herd of monster elk at the top of one peak and flew past them a few times. It was fun to watch them watch me. They didn't move at all so I guess they didn't mind. Just a spectacular Fall soaring play day. I love this sport.
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October 9, 2007 - Cedar Valley, Utah in my ASW-20B, One 1,000 ft tow, 2.6 hour flight.
I knew that this would be the last flight of the season out of Cedar Valley since Brent the airport mgr and tow pilot heads south to Mexico for the winter the second week of October every year. He returns to Utah sometime in May depending on the weather. It looked like it would be a challenging flight but I couldn't believe it. The conditions were excellent. I hit one thermal at around 3,000 above ground level that took me all the way up to 9,500 above ground level (14,500 msl) at an average rate of over 600 fpm. There are times in the summer where I can catch something going up faster but at this time of year it just amazed me.
I flew in the mountains west of Cedar Valley and then headed south. I talked to ATC (air traffic control) and had them give me traffic advisories. I love my transponder! They were more than friendly and it was fun hearing him almost brag about me being a glider at 14,000 while giving traffic advisories to other aircraft. I always enjoy the experience using them and need to do it more. I sent in my little PCAS unit because it hadn't given me a reading in over 10 flights and they verified that it was not working. The waranty took care of it which was cool but it was not cool that the unit acted like it was working without any errors. Scary. Fun great end of the Cedar Valley season.
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