Mount St. Helena Fly-in

The Sonoma boys hosted yet another successful fly-in over the weekend. Ryan G and I drove up to meet 20 other pilots and fly the the wine country, had a great time. First time there for both of us. Scenery was beautiful and green, lift abundant, beer cold.
Launch is 4k, was able to get 5800 a couple of times. You could pretty much fly as long as you wanted, but it was really choppy. Also, right around the mountain it seemed quite sinky, so everyone congregated over the peak and it got pretty busy sometimes. Fewer people, but not as organized as say, Chelan launch with 40 wings ;-)
I think I was probably over-correcting the glider a bit (hadn't been flying the litespeed much lately) but was kinda beat up after 1:30 and headed beerward.
View from over the peak, pretty sure that's Bob Stanley in lower left corner. Whether he's coring something tight or going over the falls I couldn't say. Either was pretty possible.

Oddly, once I left the peak at ~5400, I pulled rope, got past the sink zone, and found myself in completely smooooth air w zero sink--cruised at 35 mph for 5 minutes w no loss, then s-l-o-w-l-y settled down after that. The last 15 minutes of the flight were really nice, just glassy. Cruised around the valley a bit, then went in to land. Nice to fly the litespeed again, its just a nice-flying wing.
Found the right field and landed close enough to the target for a T-shirt. Some competitors took a unique lawn-dart approach to hitting the spot. If they'd told me those still counted, I'm sure I would have done better.
The BBQ was superlative, nice camping under a full moon. Great hanging out with the ever-colorful SW crew.
There were some other happenings on Sunday, so only 4 of stuck around to fly. Conditions were similar. I flew for a (short) while with what we later identified as a pair of golden eagles. Which is to say I saw them near me start to circle, turned into it with them, and watched them promptly disappear overhead. Damn locals.

Wind had picked up to 10-20 in the LZ. OK as such, but it was coming directly over a big row of trees on the long side of the field. The grass/weeds in the field were tall enough to illustrate nicely what big tree rotor looks like on the ground. I tried to land downwind of a small gap in the trees, but if there was a clean channel, it eluded me, so I got to try out the lawn dart method. Nothing broke, but I still don't see why its so popular.

Anyway, fun weekend. Thanks Sonoma Wings!