Boy Who Flew With Condors - Dick Johnson? Other Comments

On Sunday, August 28, 2016 at 1:19:58 AM UTC-6, wrote:
I have had numerous climb-outs from 200' in a Woodstock 11.9m. I used to practice them daily around 8:00 am at Zapata, TX.

However, in the prototype Carbon Dragon I once had a 63' agl climb-out at Hobbs at the beginning of a World Record attempt. This was witnessed by an FAI Official Observer who was appointed out of Geneva (pre-Paris) and who rigorously analyzed the barogram after the fact, being rather amazed at the time. This was utillizing mid morning, "soft" thermals which derived more than 50% of their bouyancy from latent heat in the humidity. There was some wind, and the only challenging moment was when I had to narrow my bank angle to make sure my inside wing lifted over a telephone wire while drifting by.

Gary Osoba

Oh yea baby! Pre Paris, Now those were the days. Of course one has to analyze the baro after the fact because watching the baro doing its thing during flight is just boring. Ive never seen a telephone line drift but we don't have to worry about that these days because everyone has a cell phone.
Did I ever tell you about my low save at 20 ft agl? Of course I was in a turboprop and some ding a ling in an ag plane who's world end at 200 ft (Is that agl or msl, I dont remember) decided to take off on an intersecting runway. Of course I am one of the mindless low time idiots who likes arbitrary rules like going around when I am about to hit someone.
We should ad points at contests for "Lowest save" and double points over ul-landable terrain (Are you listening rules comity).
Pilots who walk on water are awesome!