Hello to all readers of soaring cafe! My name is JP Stewart and I am a 17 year old relatively new pilot (a little under 2 years) flying from New Castle, VA. I am very active with Condor flying, hosting the US Nightly Soaring series of races with Daniel Sazhin. After some thought a small group of New Castle youth (Andrew Kriz, Zach Sevison, and myself) decided that Caesar Creek would be a great place to build cross country experience and confidence where a landout consists of putting the gear out, closing your eyes, and waiting until you touch the ground. The new Castle Crew pulled into CCSC on Friday night and dropped off the trailers, then headed back to Dayton so my Dad could catch a flight back home. We pulled back into the field on Saturday with the hope of doing some flying locally and getting used to the local area. Gary Adams was kind enough to take me up in the club K21 (SD) and give me a tour of the area, first impressions: It is flat here! On Sunday Andrew rigged his Mosquito (RY) and I rigged the New Castle club LS-6 (X8). After numerous delays I managed to get up later in the afternoon and squeeze an hour in, if you went far enough south there were some CU but I stayed fairly close where it was blue. Now for Monday, Camp day 1: as Frank Paynter mentioned… we flew… Condor… We expected a front moving through bringing some light rain for Monday and tomorrow there is a NW front moving in over night with some thunderstorms but there is a chance that we might fly early afternoon tomorrow. Our Condor task consisted of a 150 mile 3 leg sports class task in Slovenia. Andrew Kriz taking first with Dan Harder in third (Frank considers himself a guest even though he took 2nd), one pilot made a near 4.5 hour flight in the Libelle and still finishing high in the ranking. See the picture below of the Condorks in action! The day ended with the evening lecture by Jim Garrison on landouts and finally some downtime to write as we sit around the campfire. So far I have learned a lot with a lot more to learn, hope for some good weather!

JP Stewart

Frank Paynter “lecturing” before the task start.