JJ Jameson has had a change of heart, and will be prodding and nudging all of you to tell your flying tales. Believe it or not, I do not fly every day. When I do, and I get somewhere, or I have a particularly good flight, I try to log it in here. That is, if Alex does not beat me to it.The stories do not have to be verbally exhausting. The tales do not have to require the readers to have a Google Dictionary open to understand half the words. This is not the Presidents Log. No joke. No, I mean that. They do not have to be funny, either. This is just our documentation of the flights we are having, and a way to log the names of monkeys and visitors that are draping our skies. They can be stories to learn from as well, such as when we have an incident, and I've had my share of those. Or they can be stories of an epic flight: tell us what happened, or how you did it, or what you're going to do to fix it.
We are a mix of characters in this barrel of monkeys, and different perspectives are always welcome. It seems everyone is getting into the filming of their flights, which is great. Without pictures it is hard for me to even get motivated to write. As much as I hate to say it, or even think it, we will not be flying forever. But we will be able to look back on these chronicles to remember those times, and the friends we shared them with.
Now for the real story to get us caught up!
On Sunday, as you have seen in pictures, FlyStrong was dangling under a new hot rod, the Artik3. He said he was going to take it easy to get used to it, hahahaha. He was upside down taking pictures about 15 minutes into the flight, and he scorched the skies all the way to Secret Beach, with Reaper as a wing man. Gaza made the bay crossing to Kualoa and back. And that was it. Duck and I both tried later, but it had gone east, and we were turned at the knob. I pushed it and had to make a run for the beach. I could not take being grounded early, so I hiked up again.
There were way too many pilots present, but I will try to get all the names. Oh, there was a first flight: TallJohn. You got to get a call sign! I just used this one, but you need a better one, since we already have a few Johns (not to mention a Jon) in our midst.
Roll call on Sunday: Ike, BC Jayson and Natalie, Sidehill, Duck, Reaper, Flystrong, Stalker, Joey, Scot, Jorge, Woody, Maui Doug, Sawzall, Gaza, Chris, Allegra, B-Ray, Mike 5-0, Scrappy and Divot Steve (the flying Philips Bros.), Kevin, DC Mark, AK Jayson, Hilo Ken, One-Eye, Fireman Dave, Bonnie, Lake, and the legendary Ken "Airborne" Berry. I guess next time I will just link to the directory and write those that weren't there. For all our readers: Alex is out of state, and that is why his name has been omitted from the roll calls. TommyRD has been sick and we all wish him a speedy recovery.
On Monday, I had a tough decision. My family went to Kahana to hang with B-Ray and his family, but I elected to fly Makapuu with Ike and Jayson, hoping to fly from there to Kahana. Well, that did not happen, but a few did sneak away, with journeys to Temple Valley by BC Jayson, picture, and to Olomana by Mad Dog. Ike smartly stayed local with cloudbase at 1450 feet. A few tandems were flown by Maui Doug and Jorge, and Scrappy. Franky and AK Jayson were winging it over the tourists at the lookout. Brent flew with earlier welcome back. BigMike tried a few out of Manics but realized it might be above his pay grade right now, so he elected to do some kiting. Ginny graced us with her presence at the LZ briefly. I have to say it was fun at Makapuu. I was hoping for a downranger, but with the cloudbase that low it was not really recommended, and I am finally trying to be a safer pilot.I heard there were plenty of pilots at KahanaKuli. Sledders were being flown, due to the light conditions, but then Kevin skied out and prompted another rally up the hill. Good job Kevin. B-Ray, Woody, Duck, Harvey, BonBon and TallJohn were the other names that my wife remembered. Her memory was slipping too, thanks to Ginger and her gin and tonic elixir. I wish I had been there to enjoy my favorite place, but Makapuu Magic blurred my vision and drew me in, so of course I still had fun.
As always if you were not mentioned in this log, please chirp in on the comments so we can keep our log accurate.
It's Time to Fly, Get Your Gear and Go!
"Then write me a darn coffee read !"
Emphatically Yours,
JJ Jameson
6 comments:
Want to thank Don for the Aloha spirit he demonstated by helping a couple of novice pilots on launch. Don gave us a detailed site briefing and then offered to let me jump in front of him in the launch line. I was feeling a little anxious because I had not flown or kited in weeks and my two sons were there watching. Having an experienced pilot like Don standing by "just in case" was the added bit of confidence I needed to execute a smooth launch. Thanks Don.
JJJ...thanks for the story. I love being back in the islands and look forward to flying with you guys.
Aloha Brent
Thom, thanks for the awesome, uh, martini read! Welcome back, JJJ! I am missing you guys, and of course I'm missing the flying too, but I'm happy to hear the weather has finally eased up a bit. Keep the stories coming!
We will try and we will be waiting for Rat Race updates. Unfortunately you will be the only flier there to document the race. Good luck. Oh, JD can write too he will be there.
Typical Kahana day, (NOT)!
It started with the typical check on the weather web pages and it was looking really good at kahana but to get lighter as the day progressed... well, we had plans to go to the beach, enjoy ourselves and I knew Kahana was going to be sunny. I was hoping to score some extra family points and get Noell to like Kahana more so we headed that way.
after setting up camp, I went for a sledder with Blanca so we could get some exercise and a flight "out of the way and in the system". Me, Blanca and Kevin hiked up north launch just to check on the light conditions up on top. I got ready and wasn't picky about a cycle because I knew a quick ride to the beach was inevitable. Soon after Kevin joined me at the sandy part of Kahana. Sure enough, as soon as I started the grill, the wind started to blow! I posted on the cBox and instead of hiking again, I started flying the cooler and taking up on family duties, such as playing in the waves with the wife and make fun of my brother in law sleeping on the beach chair, what a hard life!
Donna, Duck, Ginger, Harvey, Woody/Nancy and more friends showed up to make the day even more special! As I was flying the Grill, Kevin decided to hike for the second time and showed everybody it was working fine as he skied out high above us. Duck said "I don't know if I go fly or drink a beer" and I replied with a "no brainer, go fly!" and soon other pilots followed them to the skies, including Woody, BonBon and NS Brian.
I got on Duck's paddle board with Mochi, Kalei and her friend Alicia and we all went to the river mouth play on the "Tarzan" rope ride. One of the most expected moments were about to come: to take Liliana on the paddle board deep into the "amazonic" jungle where "The River" was shot. This was her second time on a paddle board and she was very comfortable. On the third time she tried to stand up with me I had to sit down to take care of her, and so we went for almost one hour just Lili and I for some fun daddy time!
As we were packing up just before getting dark and the pilots were landing a dark cloud started dropping rain on us! we ran to get the gliders out of the rain water but no harm was made since the rain only lasted a couple of minutes.
Kahana was good to us on Kamehameha day... not your typical windy, cloudy and rainy day, not your typical good flyable day and not your typical flying buddies either (that was kinda weird) and more of a relaxed, family day (not typical at all), but nevertheless, FUN ;)
Sometimes, when is time to fly, get your gear and go have a sledder. Enjoying time with family and friends can make up for the frustration of a quick flight.
Aloha
Brazilian Ray
Good to have you back on the job there JJJ.
I'd like to second what Brent said, Don showed some major aloha helping both new and also visiting pilots with site briefings and launch assists, including my own 3 bungled attemps. Don was willing to help me through attemps 4 and beyond if needed, but I decided not to press my luck "3 strikes" right? So I decided to get some kiting in an even then Don landed layter to offer some guidance there...Thank again Don!
It was brought to my attention that both Manics and Crazy's are high profile launches and any launch disasters there will for sure be on You Tube and even the local news if severe enough. Thats the kind of publicity we don't need. Therefore from now until further notice I'm restricting
my MPU launches to Cactus or Juice, and will try to concentrate more on KNA and more kiting.
Speaking of KNA there Mr JJJ you can add me to Sundays KNA Roster...I got to KNA late after work on Sunday and made my obligatory sledder from low launch.
Aloha......Monkeys......BigMike
Thanks Mike,
That is a great decision hopefully others will take your lead. Those launches can lead you to believe their easy on one flight and bite you in the but on another.
Get in some good kiting as many of us our now doing. You can never get enough.
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