Getting ready to Launch for the sky with parachute and oxygen. Out here in the West you are on oxygen most of the time. On a good strong day the thermals normally top out near 15,000 and can go to 20,000 msl
Shot of me in front of my Jantar 15 meter glass-ship. This baby was every bit of 42/1 glide ratio (L/D, stressed for 8 g's positive and negative and rolled like a fighter.
Another shot before flying. I once did 50 loops in this thing playing some ridge lift over that ridge you see behind me at a Labor day picnic in 1986 while the crowd watched.
I'm flying the Jantar here. Notice the spoilers deployed as I try to slow down and get into position so my buddy Grant Grove can shoot this picture from his Lark
My Jantar Standard on the ground just put together out of the trailer. BTW my enclosed Minden trailer was serial number "1". You gliderheads will know what that means!
A shot of one of my buddies in his Jantar open class 22 meter. We were about 18,000 feet in this shot. Notice the mountains below. That is Mt. Charleston and it's peak is 12,000 to give proper perspective. We flew this high all summer, any day 1988. In fact I used to love to buzz that peak in the afternoons and see people who had spent all day climbing 4000 vertical then see an engineless airplane go screaming by them, pull up and do a roll.
I rebuilt this Lark LS-2 in 1985. This is the first reassembly after a complete rebuild. I found it at a dirt strip in the desert full of sand. It's a metal airplane with fabric control surfaces from Rumania. The cotten fabric had rotted off. I redid everything in it and covered it with Stitts. It still flies with that Stitts on it and it's been sitting outside for 13 years. In fact the next picture is of it doing a high speed pass this summer.
130 knot pass over the runnway at Jean this summer, flown by owner, Grant Grove. I taught Grant to fly in this baby in 1988. He now has almost 1000 hours of soaring, all in my beautiful LS-2. This is a real tribute to Stitts. This airplane has sat in the sun for 13 years and the fabric is as nice as it was when I recovered it.
I shot this picture on my first ride in the Lark in 1985 just after I rebuilt it. I'm banked up around 60 degrees at about 13,000 here and climbing in a themal at 1000 fpm to cloud base. Look at this. This is a religious experience. Ride em coyboy...Whaahooo! I almost have a full body experience just looking at this piture and to think I did this thousands of times, I never adjusted to the thrill. It is always there when you punch off tow, snag a rip-snortin thermal and peg the VSI at 2000 fpm up!!!!
A tribute to what sailplanes can do. This is a shot of the Lark this summer after an intense day of flying. I flew it around the Southwest desert almost every weekend for 5 years and NEVER failed to put it back in this parking place at the end of the day under it's own momentum. People don't realize how dynamic these high performance gliders are. They are the safest of all aircraft, no engine, no electrical, no fuel, nothing to go wrong in the way of systems. Flight contol is the only system. They are a true delight! Just the purest form of flight other than hang gliders.
