Yesterday Thursday March 26, 2015 the forecast models were agreeing that it would be light winds for the day. At 10:00 am the current conditions were showing not only blown out but also gusty at Alamogordo New Mexico (USA).
The meteorologists like everyone else have their on days and their off days.
With assistance from Hadley Robinson of El Paso Paragliding he actually tests the weather forecast with his Powered Paraglider. Early in the mornings he was able to advise us that it was lousily for PG and Poor for HG. Later weather history would show that things may have worked out between the hours of 3:30 to 5 pm.
Robin Hastings, myself (Bill C.) and John Theoret, Canadian pilot, set up and old Gemini (sp?) glider and washed out the funny white powdery stuff inside all of the batten pockets. The funny white powdery stuff (as we pilots with over 100 years of combined experience have officially identified it.) made inserting the battens into each batten pocket extremely difficult but just short of impossible.
We first made several attempts to vacuum out “The Funny White Powdery Stuff,” (herein and hence forth referred to as TFWPS) with a shop vacuum. We cut off several lengths of metal tubing of diminishing diameter, taped them together, to reduce the shop vacuum hose to a size that would fit into the full length of the batten pockets.
The success of this vacuuming effort was undetectable.
John came up with the brilliant idea to reverse the shop vacuum and attempt to blow out TFWPS.
The success to “blow out,” the TFWPS was undetectable.
At this stage of the cleaning operation I noticed the effects of my 100 mg of Celebrex was undetectable.
Soon Robin’s enthusiasm waned to the point that he vacated the area to attend a Toastmasters meeting. John and I remained to figure it all out just east of the shaded area in Robin‘s back yard.
Next I rubbed some Dove Unscented Hypoallergenic, bar, hand and body soap on each batten.
Seeing this John came up with the idea to raid the Hastings laundry room for liquid, washing, soap to pour down the cleaning tube and then hook it up to the garden hose (green).
I could hardly make a twist type garden hose connection or turn on the faucet without pipe wrenches due to the laundry soap on everything.
The lawn was saturated and slippery for some reason. Most everything was soggy to including the batten pattern, shoes, jeans, glider, glider bag and pads.
It was an emotional moment for me when Robin H. appeared to help us. It almost brought me to tears.
Robin H., was the first to test the effects our efforts and we were pleased to see a vast improvement for inserting battens. It was down from almost impossible to mildly difficult.
We declared success and to let things drain out and dry up we waded off to Ihop restaurant where Robin H. treated us at lunch time.
Now that we have this task figured out we will volunteer to clean out your batten pockets for a thousand dollars each.
(My apology to Ihop for us tracking in all that mud.
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