November 10th: flying fun, special monkey suprise arrival

Hola Monkeys! Today was our first official fly day, and we started out with flying Alto Hospicio launch. After a great breakfast in the morning, we were escorted down to Huayquique beach for another LZ briefing. We then headed up to Alto Hospicio launch. Conditions were cloudy but good in the morning and we started launching members of our group around 930am.

Larry Mac had a great launch and he flew and landed at Huayquique for a great first flight.

I launched as well and had a good flight although had some issues with my new external mic being too noisy due to wind. We fixed that later at lunch with Luis' help at the mall and I acquired some velcro to glue to the mic courtesy of superglue provided by Larry Mac.

The afternoon was a fun day at a much lighter and managable afternoon at Palo Buque. Todd demonstrated some sand clearing techniques (man the sand is in everything!) which was great to see.

I did a ton of kiting and focused a lot on my "in the window" skills and kited up enough to get a little sledder in. Nothing spectacular but it did turn out to be a bit light and no one really stayed up but everyone got a hand in at getting some solid kiting work done.

We recouped at the hotel for a bit then all who were able headed out for dinner at Neptuno's a seafood restaurant with excellent food and awesome Pisco Sours.

Sorry I don't have video or pics from today since I have either lost my helmet and cam or left it in the van. A bit panicked but figure I'll just check the van in the morning and hope for the best.

We had a surprise monkey visit at dinner and who should show up other than Flash! He'll hopefully be flying with us tomorrow and perhaps more pictures will ensue to satisfy the insatiable JJ waiting for his morning coffee read.

Today was an awesome learning day for both me and Larry and I my new Acro3 harness is fitting like a glove now that I've made some final adjustments. I took a stab at a bit of the smooth thermal action, but when my radio talk was unintelligible to instructors I opted to go for the safe short cross over the narrow part of city with lots of LZ options and dial in a landing at the primary LZ. Everything went well, and my mic should now be good for tomorrow.

We meet tomorrow morning at 830 to do Alto Hospicio again and if I didn't lose my helmet and cam should have something more substantive up then.

Miss having more monkeys around, but we're having a great time anyway!

Sharky