Zirks

Wednesday turned out pretty good.  We had two H2s fly from Zirks for the first time.  Congrats to Dave Gills and Ghassan Shaanon, aka, G-Man for their maiden flights at Mountaineer sites.  We'll make hillbillies out of them in no time.  Brad Barkley also made a rare appearance and rounded out the quartet of pilots.  The sky looked great and the winds at launch were mostly straight in around 10 mph with occasional gusts to 15 mph.  Dave launched first at about 3:30 PM and showed everyone it was soarable.  He chose to land after 20 minutes or so as he felt the air was a little bumpy for his tastes.  Ghassan launched next and also soared with the greatest of ease. He ended up getting almost an hour (his longest flight ever!).  Brad went next and got up without problem, but ended up getting scraped off the ridge after about 35 minutes,  I self-launched last and almost got scraped off with Brad, but found a ripping thermal at 400' below launch and was able to climb to 2700' msl (1200' over launch) getting about 45 minutes.  Everyone had reasonably good launches and good landings in the new (old) LZ with the only complication being that they were replacing the railroad crossing by Charlie's house so we had to hump our gliders and gear out of the LZ.  It was a fun day!!!