Record Setting X/C weekend

friends of RAS: the Cherokee Kid had a wonderful weekend of killer
cross country flying.

Saturday I thermalled to 4000 AGL over the Ames, IA airport before
setting out to the west only to find basically no worthwhile lift.
Hoping to core some thermals coming off the Pufferbilly Days
celebration in downtown Boone, IA proved fruitless so I landed at the
municipal airport there. That had to have been somewhere near 11
miles!

Sunday. CFI-G and cross country mentor Matt Michael woke me up with a
late morning phone call about how great the blipmaps looked. with
that I was off to the airport. Gave a few guest rides in the Blanik
and worked some 2-300 fpm lift to the 2500 AGL range. yippee! tied
the blanik down and got a team together to assemble the Cherokee. at
2:30 PM launched behind master tow pilot Darin Sanders and found some
lift here and there. cored a 400 fpm thermal shared with a red tailed
hawk to a whopping 3000 AGL cloudbase. Set out downwind to the SE.
there was high overcast but there was lift under scraggly looking
cumulus clouds. in hindsight I should've flown for the clouds. got
low over a beautiful sod farm and worked some lift there. then got
suckered by another hawk who was circling in sink (that jerk!!).
tried to continue downwind but went down fast from my perch at 1500
AGL. soon was too far downwind of the sod farm to land. picked a nice
pasture with power lines in all quadrants and trees in 3. Grand total
of 12 miles!

Matt Michael snapped this pictu
http://picasaweb.google.com/cherokee...53461761416706

Suggested Caption: Glider Pilot Tony Condon is Out Standing in his
field after a land out in a pasture in Central Iowa.

I can only hope that your weekend flying was nearly as successful as
mine!