[Martin]

Mansfield August 7th

Third day into our week long Mansfield trip and its Mia’s turn to fly, my turn to run the tow rig.

I spent the morning doing some maintenance on the VR (sweep check, flap adjustments). Also, after 3+ years of running the same harness zipper in the volcanic ash of the Columbia basin had finally taken its toll…. So it was time for a new zipper (fortunately it’s a simple Velcro in style).

While working on my glider, we spotted a wild looking dust devil ripping through a small field of wheat right in town (arround 11 am) so Mia figured it was time to go flying…..

By the time we got packed up and got out to the tow site, Mia was hooked in a ready to tow at 1pm. She had her work cut out for her today. Today was one of those days that the heavy dust devil activity was both east and west of the tow site…. But not at the tow site! It took 3 tows before she finally got away. First a 2000 ft high tow yielded nothing. The second 1800 ft… zip. Finally her low 1100 foot tow met a serious bit of lift and she was able to pin off and climb out to 7600ft.

From there she headed east to Sims, peaked out at 8600, then headed for Banks Lake. At the edge she was down to 6600ft but decided to “go for it” (the best plan when right at the edge with stiff winds aloft). She arrived on the other side at 5400ft (2800agl) but 10-20 kms sw surface winds made for difficult scratch conditions. Mia had her sights set on a flight out to Reardon but after just over an hour in the air she was on the ground. 15 minutes later her faithful tow-mister had arrived with cold beverages and assisted the breakdown and loading of her wing.

All followed by the usual…. Off to Sun Lakes, swim, beer, swim, another beer (not too many!), back to the shack, dinner (Jeff came out to watch more Jockey Sanderson video.

Weather change has started, lots of mares-tails aloft, some imbedded development to the south but no lightning. Last word the Tripod fire now sits at 75,000 acres, with one of the officials quoting that he did not expect the fire to be out before the snow fly’s….. sounds like "job security" to me.....