June 21/17 – PPG course day 5 am
It was an excellent morning today. Nice and cool, grass was little bit dewy but sun burned it off very quickly. When we started to set up we only had 5 km/h wind. Kevin were first to go, he tried few forwards but they didn’t work for him. After those failed attempts I went to Mike. He was ready to go and since the wind started to get up to 10 Km/h we went for it. On his first inflation glider came up with ear under line. I told him to stop the take off over radio but he was too into it and took off. So there was a small disturbance in this canopy that was causing him to constantly turn left. He was having hard time dealing with it and also was not fully seated even though we paracticed this in the simulator and he didn’t have any issues with that. He flew couple circuits like this and then we decided to land. He had unstabilized landing tripped and fell down on his knees and his side. The problem was that his left shoulder was injured long time ago and now is susceptible to coming in and out of the socket and that is exactly what happened. It was hurting him but he was willing to go up again.
Meanwhile Kevin get ready and since there was more wind he was able to reverse and in no time Kevin managed five amazing flights. He is steadily improving every flight and take offs and landings are better than the previous – ones he’s also loving it. I can tell. It’s going to make a great pilot.
Mike tried again to take off, perfect inflation, perfect stabilization but as he started to off the power and start to run do you end up jumping in to see Julie. This again aggravated his shoulder to the point where it starts to hurt that he could not try again.
Konstantin was working on his reverse inflations with the motor on once Kevin and Mike were done with their flights I spend an hour with Konstantin cleaning up his technique. He has improved to the point where he now feels confident to go on first solo. I’m pretty sure it’s going to happen for him this afternoon.
Congratulations to Mike on two more flights. Congratulation Kevin on five aditional flights. Good luck Konstantin on your solo tonight.
