Back in the (contest) saddle again at Dansville, NY

For a number of reasons, I haven’t flown a contest day since the last contest day at Ionia in late May.  The Cordele regional was completely rained out, and after that I was the CD at our CCSC Region 6 meet so I while I got to fly, I didn’t get to fly in the contest :-(.  So, I’m anxious to get going again here in Dansville, NY.

As I was driving from Columbus Ohio yesterday, I was treated to beautiful soaring weather, to the point where I speculated that I could probably have flown the entire distance in my glider.  Its about 400 statute miles, or about 650km.  I’ve flown over 500km in Ohio several times now (mostly triangles), so a downwind 650km dash didn’t seem entirely impossible, especially with the high cloudbases and streets I was seeing during the drive.

After arriving and dismounting the Micro-Castle yesterday afternoon, I happened to be looking at the top of the camper (more on this later) and discovered to my horror that the vent cover right over my bed area was completely missing – I could look right down through a 14 x 14″ hole and see my bed!  Clearly I was in need of an emergency vent replacement.  Fortunately, Dansville airport is very near an interstate exit, and there was a Tractor Supply nearby.  I went there thinking I would be able to find something like a shallow plastic container that I could put over the hole as a temporary repair.  The counter person at Tractor Supply didn’t think they had anything like that, and was directing me elsewhere, when someone in the checkout line piped up and said “if you are trying to replace a standard 14 x 14 trailer vent, I have one – would you like it?” – whoa, that was freaky!  So, I followed this good Samaritan to their home about 5 miles away, and paid them $20 for a complete 14 x 14 vent assembly, including even a rain shield.  Back to the Tractor Supply for a caulk gun and lots of RTV caulking, then back to the airport where I was able to use the cover from my new vent assembly to cover the hole in my Micro-Castle.  Boy, talk about luck!

So, the rest of the story is this:  I had my Micro-Castle deployed down at CCSC for a week-long ‘Adult camp’ and I remounted it on the pickup after flying on Thursday so I could start out from my home Friday morning for Dansville.  When I arrived home Thursday evening, it had been so long since I had my camper on the pickup,  I wasn’t thinking and tried to drive into my garage with the camper still mounted (doesn’t fit, as you might surmise).  Fortunately, I was going VERRRRRYYYY slowly and had so realized the problem quickly when I heard/felt something.  I backed out and looked the camper over for damage, but didn’t find any (couldn’t see the vent from where I was), so I thought I had gotten away ‘Scott-Free’.  It wasn’t until yesterday afternoon here that I realized that I hadn’t escaped entirely unscathed.

Dansville airport is an absolutely gorgeous small public airport in upstate New York, about 30 miles or so northwest of Harris Hill (Elmira, NY).  The two clubs (Finger Lakes Soaring Club at Dansville, Harris Hill Soaring Club at Harris Hill) share the same soaring area, and the same waypoint database, and have a tradition of alternating the Region 3 regional contest between the two sites.    It has been a while since I’ve flown a contest out of Dansville (the last time I was here I was flying my LS-4), and my memories of the contest aren’t good ones (I managed to land out twice on the same day the last time), so I’m hoping for a better result this time around ;-).

Frank (TA)