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•  Shoulder surgery disruption 06 Feb 2012, 18:00

  I go in for surgery on Monday, the 6th, and that means that there may be some disruption in my normal publishing schedule as I ride the wave of the narcotic pain relievers and I try to type with my left hand.

  Discuss "Shoulder surgery disruption" at the Oz Report forum   link»

  

•  Bob Grant and his new Go-Pro 06 Feb 2012, 18:00

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evmFkRAOsZo

  Discuss "Bob Grant and his new Go-Pro" at the Oz Report forum   link»

  

•  Action Camera 06 Feb 2012, 17:59

  Patrick Kruse <<patrick>> writes:

  I thought you may want to do a review on the Oz Report of this new HD Video Camera offering from our friends at Midland. I met Mike at the recent Outdoor Retailer show in Salt Lake City and when he showed me some of the functionality of their new camera I was really impressed, mostly with the user interface of knowing when the camera is on and taking images. The shape is a lot cleaner then some of the current video offerings and the mounting options are way better suited to our airframes. You can check the out full overview here:

  Http://www.midlandradio.com/Action-Cameras.CA8

  The 1080p version can be found here:

  http://www.midlandradio.com/Action_Cameras_XTC.EBK/XTC300VP4

  and the cool mounts are here:

  http://www.midlandradio.com/Action_Cameras_XTC.EBK/XTC300VP4#accessoriesTab

  Discuss "Action Camera" at the Oz Report forum   link»

  

•  Cloudsuck, chapter 10 06 Feb 2012, 17:59

  Many pilots wonder what it really takes to set a world record. Some wonder what it's like to fly at a place like Zapata or other world class sites. Cloudsuck answers these and other questions while telling the story of how I set the current Distance World Record for Rigid Wings. Over this winter, I am pleased to make the book available as a gift to my readers in serialized form. Each Monday, another chapter will be available for you to enjoy here on the Oz Report. The best read is the one in it's entirety, and both the soft cover book and an ebook are available to purchase here: http://ozreport.com/cloudsuck.php. You can find the Kindle version on Amazon.

  If you enjoy the serialized installments, you may wish to skip the text below and jump directly to this week's chapter, including any graphics or pictures here: http://ozreport.com/docs/Cloudsuck10.pdf

  I hope you enjoy the book and this week's chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  Zapata – the World Record Encampment

  “I think everyone is missing the boat going to Hobbs or Wyoming every year.” Gary Osoba had leaned forward in his chair on the patio of an East Wichita restaurant. “You can’t get started early enough, you can’t get a consistent enough tail wind, and it’s too easy to be shut down early by overdevelopment.”

  That was back in June 1999, when Belinda, Dave Glover and I had stopped in Kansas on our way out to Hobbs. As we had pored over the map spread out among the remains of our meal, Gary had pointed to an area southeast of Hobbs. “I’ve been looking at the weather patterns, and I think you want to start from further east, over in Texas — maybe as far south as Brownsville. I think you could get some really long flights down there”

  And so the seed had been planted for what Gary would later whimsically title the World Record Encampment, an expedition to an obscure place in southeastern Texas right on the Rio Grande — the small town of Zapata.

  Gary had been studying Texas weather data for a several years. Although he already held more sailplane world records than any other glider pilot, he was hungry for more — and the intellectual challenge of finding the “perfect” place continued to intrigue him. Looking for a specific pattern that would provide the necessary conditions, he had noticed a large meteorological feature that develops in the Gulf of Mexico during the summer — the extension of the Bermuda high.

  This high-pressure region is so big that it dominates the summer weather from Florida to West Texas and from the Yucatan to Oklahoma City. The center of the extension of the high pressure, when situated just right for world records, lies south of New Orleans and east of Brownsville, Texas.

  The winds associated with the Bermuda High, as with any high pressure area in the northern hemisphere, circulate clockwise, bringing southeast winds to South Texas. And this high pressure system isn’t a once-every-couple-of-days kind of thing, but a consistent pattern. In the summer, day after day the high remains out over the Gulf of Mexico with the winds consistently rotating clockwise around it. Weather disturbances coming from the west and north generally bounce off it and go up through Kansas or the Dakotas. This consistency was important to Gary because it could dramatically increase his chances of setting a world record during a one- or two-week visit.

  Earlier that year he had flown south out of Uvalde, a popular sailplane port just west of San Antonio, looking for the conditions it would take to fly his ultralight Carbon Dragon the 450 miles to set a world open-distance record for ultralight sailplanes (and Class 4 hang gliders). From Uvalde he had cruised toward Crystal City, but he hadn’t made it as far south as Laredo.

  The terrain looked promising, he thought, but no one he knew of had ever flown a hang glider or a sailplane in extreme South Texas, so he didn’t have any local lore to provide guidance. He knew that moist winds would be flowing out of the Gulf of Mexico, and that cumulus clouds would mark the lift coming off the warm flat alluvial plain below. He wondered how far south it might be possible to start a cross-country flight.

  Gary had spent some of his youth in east Texas, but he didn't have much on-the-ground familiarity with the areas on the border, around Laredo and McAllen. He didn't know if there would be suitable landing areas for a pilot who landed early. He didn't know if there was an airport that would let soaring pilots set up camp there.

  Gary’s usual strategy was to get going very early in the morning — much, much earlier than most pilots thought it was possible to stay aloft. Once in the air, he would hang out in the lightest of lift, drifting with a favorable wind, and just hold on until the day got better. Gary had already used this strategy to his advantage in competitions, taking advantage of the Carbon Dragon’s low sink rate to get out on course ahead of all the others, making up for the fact that he couldn't fly nearly as fast in the heat of the day as they could. If he could get going early enough, he felt he stood a good chance of setting another world record.

  The historical weather records indicated to Gary that cumulus clouds would start forming soon after dawn near Laredo to provide visual help, showing where the lift was early, when conditions were light. The extra help of the cumulus clouds would make it just that much more possible to stay up in the light morning lift. He figured that by afternoon he should be able to reach the Hill Country just to the north of Uvalde. Those hot, convoluted rocks the size of hills should be cooking by then, providing plenty of strong lift to get him up high and onto the Edwards Plateau in short order.

  Despite the lack of previous long distance flights in sailplanes or hang gliders from South Texas, all the weather records indicated that this would be a very fruitful spot. Gary figured he should be able to make it to the Texas panhandle by late in the afternoon in his Carbon Dragon, into an area of high winds blowing north. With five hundred miles behind him, he believed he should be able to set a new ultralight sailplane record of over six hundred miles.

  Ever since that evening in the Wichita restaurant, Gary and I had been e-mailing each other, mulling over the idea of a flying safari to South Texas, hashing over possible locations. Gary had intensified his review of twenty years worth of weather data, which was available thanks to the World Wide Web and the industrious National Weather Service. His analysis told him that south toward Brownsville he should indeed be able to find the world record place that he — and by now we — were looking for.

  In spite of Michael's death in Hobbs, I felt that it would be worthwhile going to South Texas. I had really enjoyed my big flights in Australia, where I still thought it was possible to set a world record. Now, with Gary's enthusiasm and my trust in his ability to correctly read the weather data, I felt that South Texas was just a lot better than anywhere else in the world.

  If breaking Larry's record really was possible — and I sure hadn’t believed that a year earlier — then trying for world records might not be such a futile exercise after all. I now had experience with a couple of two hundred-mile flights (well, one was 199.5 miles), so the impossible was now perhaps possible for me. If Texas was that much better than all the other sites people had tried, well then maybe it was a goer.

  I'd been in contact with pilots around the world through the Oz Report who had a lot to say about their local versions of the world's best site to go long distances. The Brazilian pilots were especially enthusiastic about Andradas, a site in northeastern Brazil. As in South Texas, you could get an early start there because of the sea breezes, and there was always a steady tailwind. The problem was that this Brazilian site was too close to the equator, so the day length was too short. The thermals stopped at 5:30 in the afternoon, and it was dark by six. In Texas you could fly until 9:45 if you flew within a few weeks of the solstice.

  South African pilots were convinced that Namibia was the hot spot. Of course, they didn't mention the difficulty of following and finding pilots flying across the desert. Maybe South Texas wasn't the most scenic spot in the world to set the distance world record, but just because it was conveniently located didn’t mean it wasn't exotic enough to be just that.

  Now as the summer of 2000 approached, Gary had to nail down the actual launch site, with a place to tow, high early cloud bases, strong enough south to southeast winds, and at least basic amenities nearby. In June, as the high pressure in the Gulf of Mexico set up, he analyzed the hourly values for cloudbase, as well as wind speed on the ground and aloft. Picking two sites, one near McAllen and one further north on the highway to Laredo, he sent out the daily data to Dave Sharp, Kari Castle, Tiki Mashy, and me.

  It soon became clear that Zapata, forty miles south of Laredo, had the best mix of higher early morning clouds and light winds on the ground with stronger winds aloft. Gary phoned the Zapata Chamber of Commerce as he tried to determine whether this was the spot. He reported to us on his conversation by e-mail:

  I might be blowing it here. From my cyber-perspective, today looks about the worst weather-wise for quite a while with oppressive high pressure down there.

  Even so, I just got off the phone with the Chamber of Commerce staff, and off-hand remarked that there's probably not a cloud in the sky. They looked outside, and said:

  Zapata: "No, there are puffy clouds but they're just scattered around. They're not very much bunched up together, which is what I hear you want."

  Gary: "Really...I'm surprised. But we do want them to line up together."

  Zapata: "Yeah, they're kind of spread apart like a bunch of different lines across the sky. They just look like several lanes in straight lines. Maybe it will get better before you get here".

  Gary: (To himself) "Fish in a barrel". (To Zapata) "I'll bet the wind's not blowing very strong today, is it?"

  Zapata: "Yeah, that's the good thing because usually when the cloud lanes are everywhere it's just so windy. It's only blowing about 15 mph today. Maybe when you get here, there will be lots of clouds and the wind won't blow so hard."

  Gary: "Righto".

  Ooh, it looks like a perfect day. Too bad we aren't there yet, and won't be there for a while.

  In addition to the consistency of the high that centered itself in the Gulf of Mexico, what made it unique was how big it was. Stability would give us the same good conditions day after day. But the size of this weather feature was what would make straight-line flight downwind possible.

  Continue reading here: http://ozreport.com/docs/Cloudsuck10.pdf

  Discuss "Cloudsuck, chapter 10" at the Oz Report forum   link»

  

•  PWC Superfinal final results 05 Feb 2012, 02:24

  http://www.paraglidingworldcup.org/node/2005

  http://www.paraglidingworldcup.org/node/2005/415

  Discuss "PWC Superfinal final results" at the Oz Report forum   link»