Scott O'Brien

First flight of the trip off Monroe!

Launch was very challenging. I found that it took me ages to get in line due to finding a tension knot, then having to step aside to fix it (which took me a good 10-15 minutes. It was a good one). Launch was slow being a single line on a north launch, and the wind being far too strong and dying down at just after midday when the upper clouds started forming to shadow the valley out a bit. It was amazing to see how much the smaller wispy clouds had such a large affect.

By the time I was getting to the front of the line, the wind was switching from North to more West. I had one bad bring up attempt and brought it back down in a bush, then after the following launch was very west and odd, moved to the West launch.

It was strong, the launch was ok, but I was getting my foot stuck when trying to get it into my pod harness. I believe I either leant too much, or perhaps accidentally pulled some break as I was getting in. Not entirely sure what happened to the wing, but something as I was getting away. After talking with Honda on it, I’m going to stay out of my harness for longer, and try to hook a foot into it before moving back into it.

The flight was pretty amazing. Some strong punches, but, fantastic climbs that could easily get you over 12,000ft.

My goal was to climb, push up north in front blue Finn, then bench back up to Cove if I could.

I think this flight was a bit shorter than I would have liked, mainly because of a head game. As I was heading over to Cove, I heard chatter of a pilot down under reserve, so started pushing out to the LZ. There was no more chatter after a while and when I wanted to climb and head back up, struggled for a little while but couldn’t make it work. This I think was mainly driven from Arpan’s recent event and being too conservative around it.

In this instance, my take aways are to try and ignore a lot of what’s going on radio if I can’t help, and be aware, but don’t stop my flight until we have confirmed issue. In this case, the pilot was unharmed and was able to walk out, but that conversation was moved to Telegram and not on radio.

Still a great flight though. This wing is solid.

Take aways:

1. Maestro feels like a very solid, fantastic wing
2. Keep out even longer than I think I need to in launch position
3. Hook foot into pod first before leaning back.
4. Don’t worry so much about others on radio until there’s reason I should be doing something.

Sent from my iPhone