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2/27, 5:05pm Richard McDermott A monkey record might just fall today... Chris Caywood has been in the air for more than 2 hours!
2/27, 7:13pm Lindsay Matush WHAT?!?!?!? Go monkeys!!!!!!!! 2/27, 8:24pm Nick Grady It was amazing. My personal best ....2 hour 9 minutes  3/2, 3:48pm Richard McDermott Definitely thermic mixed with ridge lift. Chris was above pin off several times. Pin off was about 1400. My 40 minute ridge flight was pretty bumpy.
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2/20, 6:38pm Chris Lee Condo soaring at Deerfield Beach. Did two short tows to get used to hand-towing, then benched up first try. 1:14hr flight. Wind was almost 45 deg cross from the north, but lift band was still generous. At one point, there were four wings airborne. Max altitude 550'. 
2/21, 8:15pm Chris Lee Another day in Florida, another soaring site. Winds were a little light, around 7-8mph. Just enough to take a lap down the dune. I could imagine this place being a lot of fun at 15mph. 20160222 Paraglider Kiting from Chris Lee on Vimeo. 
2/7, 12:32am Chris Lee 43.87 miles, 2:18hrs. Thanks for the tow, Richard. And especially thanks for the retrieve, Nick! Monkeys rock!
2/8, 1:09pm
Lindsay Matush Chris!!!! I just watched your entire flight. That was completely incredible. NICE FLYING! Couple questions for you as I was trying to learn from your flight. 1 - it looked like several times you were flying straight and going up at 300 - 500 fpm but not turning - but it looked like you were picking good lines and continuing to climb. I'm curious why/ how you decided at times to turn and at times to fly straight? 2. were you predominately flying downwind when you left thermals or were you using ground markers or clouds to decide where you went next? 3. Did you find a lot of thermal drift? It looked like they were drifting pretty hard to me but can't tell if that was my view in doarama. 4. what were the clouds like? I'm curious about conditions - I wonder if there's any chance that yesterday was pre frontal. I've read a bit about pre-frontal flying and supposedly it's one of the best. Just trying to understand connection of conditions to our performance here. 5. At around the 1:50 ish mark I notice that you spent a lot of time after flying through some serious sink in zeros, followed by some light lift and really fished around for it until you got it. I'd love to hear more about how you did that -I think that's one of the things you're best at. Again - INCREDIBLE flight. Your'e only about 20 miles shy of our state record aren't you? I'm so inspired about what's possible here. Thanks a lot for sharing. 2/8, 6:42pm Chris Lee Great questions, Lindsay. We were talking about getting together to have a discussion about XC flying. Walking thru some flights together with Google Earth would be much more beneficial than doing it here. I have some questions too. Doarama isn’t the best for analyzing flights. I uploaded the IGC file to the ToggleMonkeys dropbox. And here’s a link to the KML. https://www.dropbox.com/s/utfth5a9zndx5c5/CHRIS_LEE_2016_02_06_19_54_22.kml?dl=0
But to address your questions in case others are curious too:
1) Depends on the section you are asking about but if you notice, I took a hard right turn while in the first good piece of lift at the beginning of the flight. This was because I was approaching Lambert B Class airspace. Floor is 4500’ and I was above 5000’ when my proximity alarm went off. So I ran parallel to it for awhile waiting to sink below before crossing. At one point I thought of trying to go SE all the way around the edge of the airspace, but decided it was too far to run crosswind. After that, I had to stay under 4500’ until well past O’Fallon, Ill. So that may be part of what you’re seeing, I realized I couldn’t go higher so I set out on glide even while in lift.
2) I was mostly progressing downwind coming out of thermals. There were a couple wandering deviations when I wasn’t sure where the next ride was, so I tracked toward some LZ options like school fields. I went past Belleville West HS and a little later saw those two paragliders kiting at a middle school field. I had to leave lift near O’Fallon to skirt around Scott AFB D Class airspace.
3) Winds aloft were 15-17mph, I wasn’t going to be doing a box and returning to launch. We had some rowdy launches with a bit of cross but also some shear layers, just a lot of active flying and it felt like it required some active tow teching too (I towed Patrick once and Richard got me up both times.) I had two small asyms and a couple hard jerks coming in and out of thermal cores but nothing unmanageable, the rowdiest stuff was on tow.
4) This was the first day in awhile that I’ve seen nice cumis popping. Started across the river when we were setting up and I launched first just before the clouds got overhead. My first flight was a sled ride, actually worse. 6m/s down, consistently, from release till 800’. I almost got down faster than the drogue chute. But the cumis kept coming and Richard thinks there were cloud streets developing when I went up for my second flight. It’s snowing today, so does that mean Saturday was prefrontal? I looked at my free xcskies rearcast (you can see previous day’s forecast without paying) and the models did show “possible good XC conditions" for Saturday down in the valley.
5) This last section I was flirting with 1000’, so I was really just looking for various LZs. Ideally roads with no power lines and no tree lines on the upwind edge. So I would track one LZ until I found another further downwind. That neutral air was doing enough to maintain so I just went with it and eventually it developed. I ended up leaving that solid lift not because it topped out but because of operator error. I never switched my GPS off DST, so I thought it was one hour later than it was and I had to work that night, so I just set off on glide to make up some ground. Otherwise I could have taken that back to 4500’ and probably would have cleared the airspace by that point anyway.
While there were clouds overhead, I was mostly navigating off of ground features, trying to keep an LZ available. This was my first time flying around airspace, so another thing to think about. The rest was Richard’s “Blind Hollow-Boned Squirrel” method, otherwise known as #jetflaps. Lastly, I didn’t realize Marc's “Geographically-Challenged Disease" was contagious but apparently it is. I’m about 20 miles shy of the state record and about 1mile shy of being in bounds to count for Missouri (62.9mi). The Illinois record by Jaro is 104.2mi. My immediate goals are 100K which feels entirely attainable with our site and our support group, just need the right day. I’d also like someone, anyone, to foot launch the cemetery and sky out. And I want to see Richard land at his house.
I’d like to learn more about XC flying with waypoints and doing triangles or boxes. Going from A to B is interesting for sightseeing, but having to do upwind legs would be substantially more challenging and using waypoints would help me learn to use the instruments better. A big advantage is not having to deal with long, time-consuming retrieves (thanks again for sacrificing your flight, Nick!) An exception to this would be when we can get a whole group airborne to go XC together, so far it hasn’t happened for us, but like Lindsay’s flying in Colombia showed, could be really cool. Not sure how it would work out, we don’t really have a good stationary hill to slope waiting for everyone to launch, so I guess it would have to be on a low wind day.
Flight Info Duration 2:18:48 Max vario 4.9 m/sec Min vario -3.1 m/sec Max alt (ASL) 1623 m Min alt (ASL) 150 m Takeoff alt (ASL) 150 m Altitude gain 1473 m Max speed 63.1 km/h Mean speed 37.6 km/h Max Distance 70.6 km (30.5 km/h) 2/8, 9:51pm Patrick JoyceWow, lots to catch up on. :) It isn't a record breaker, but hands down the most fun I've had in the Bottoms! Shared a thermal with 2 immature bald eagles from about 20:00 to 24:00 and at about 24:00 I entered a "flock" of about 6 mature bald eagles and lost all focus. 2/8, 9:59pm Patrick Joyce I would agree that Saturday was pre-frontal, but probably on the early side of the pre-frontal conditions. Additionally, because of the mild winter we are having, I think Sat was prime spring conditions. There was a great lapse rate and lots of heating at the surface, which created some great thermals. I was in 800 fpm up once! Lift that strong doesn't happen every day out there. And on a day like Saturday, with just a little bit more West component to the wind, the entire bluff by Richard's would be an easy soar and with some thermals around I'm sure it would be possible to sky out from the cemetery.  2/4, 4:36pm Chris Lee He's doing it! Richard just launched the cemetery, jumped the gap and headed south for his house 
2/4, 9:05pm Richard McDermott Still super stoked about the flight today. First flight on the new wing and boy did it deliver! I believe this gives me naming rights to the ridge. I'm thinking Monkey Ridge. Has a nice ring to it. 
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