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From Jim Taulman
A blast from the past at Mt. Magazine
July 19, 1998.
Wind 5-15 S. I launched my HP-AT behind Wispy at 2:10 in a cycle that had the trees below launch all moving. Headed left over to the spine east of launch and caught some rowdy lift that went to 4,000’, 2 grand over launch. From there I kept working my way east down the mountain. At the east end I found some 1,000 fpm up and hollered at Stump and James on the radio and they headed that way. We got to 5,700’ and began pushing out front. Mark veered left and headed for Havana. There were clouds out front and across the valley of hwy 10 and James and I drove on south. Coming in under a cloud over the valley I got back to 5,800’. The lift so far had been pretty turbulent and with lots of sink around. Before we got to hwy 10 James peeled off and headed after Mark toward Havana, forgetting his old admonition that if you fly to Havana you’re going to land.
I was searching for lift over hwy 10 and got down to 3,700 and headed back to the mountain in sink. Finding nothing over the spine I’d initially used to climb out, I got down below the top and at 1,800’ headed for Albright’s. The rowdy sink continued all the way out to the LZ but I finally hit lift just before getting over the field. I hung on for dear life and eventually this beauty took me to 6,000’ back over the mountain. I headed out front again under better clouds this time. I had no problem staying up under them this time as I moved upwind from cloud to cloud. Coming in under one I got up to 6,500’ and kept going across the valley. The downwind edges of the clouds were pretty rough but punching through that got to the good stuff under the cloud and on the upwind side.
I finally got all the way across the valley south of hwy 10 and just in back of Potato Hill mountain. I was heading for a nice looking cloud there but was down to 1,500’ and figured I might be landing soon. Coming in under low under the cloud I hit the smoothest thermal I’ve ever seen. It was a quiet 600-900 fpm glassy smooth elevator that took me to cloud base at 7,250. I could hardly believe the vario since the lift felt like an evening glass off. At cloudbase the lift dissipated instead of getting stronger the way it often does. I hung out there for a while marveling at the view of Blue mountain lake and Mag, talking to other folks who were still in the air.
Barron had launched and climbed out over Mag by this time. I headed back across the valley to check the lift out over there. I got back over launch at 4,700’ and worked that back to 5,300’. Barron was there and we decided if we could get higher we’d take off on an XC toward Paris. We climbed to 6,500’ and headed out. We found clouds back over Corley and Country Kitchen and got up to 7,250’ in some rough lift. I stayed around 6,800-7,000 by skirting the edges of the developing cumies. Once over hwy 22 most of the clouds vanished, as usual, and I headed for a lone cloud north of Paris airport. Only got zero sink under it and maintained for a while there at 5,000’. Barron was in sink over the airport so we headed west toward hwy 309. Barron hit a good one, getting back to 7,000’ and kept driving north toward the river. I had gotten ahead of him after leaving the airport and had a long final glide that ended at Webb City, just shy of the river and the town of Ozark. I landed in the same field that I landed on the first flight on my Sport-AT 7 years before, 22.5 miles from Mag. Barron came in right behind me and his wife Linda showed up soon after in his truck for the retireve. It was 3 ½ hours of some of the classic great air that Mag has to offer.
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