Thursday - Aug 20, 1998

Hi All,

I have always found Larry's and George's flight reports entertaining 
and informative, so I thought I would drop a note regarding an 
interesting flight I had yesterday.

On this day I headed east and found the lift reasonably easy to 
find, center, and climb in. Around Gore I found the lift formed 
streets and I was able to do quite a bit of straight flying by pulling 
up in the lift. I made it to Truro in about one hour. 

One of the interesting parts of the flight was the use of Pat Tye's 
GPS. I learned just enough about it to discover a number of 
interesting facts: I could quickly flip the GPS settings, alternately 
giving distance and direction from HFX Airport or Stanley. I found 
knowing my distance from stanley was most useful. On this day I 
went around truro and past debert, and as I flew west just south of 
the cobequid mountains I was always watching the GPS and my 
distance from Stanley. I could quickly determine an approximate 
altitude that I would need if I wished todo a final glide across the 
basin back to stanley. 

The other interesting bit of info from the GPS was ground speed. 
Because we had a significant west wind and also strong termals I 
would do about 80-90 knots at times, and I was pleasantly 
surprized to see ground speeds of up to 180km/h-which makes 
since but you just don't appreciate it at altitude.

Another thing I discover on the flight was landable terrain. There is 
an abundance of landable fields from truro to debert and west about 
another 10-20 km. And I crossed the basin about 5 km west of 
debert/maitland,and on the stanley side I found many long clear 
fields about 2-3km inland(I'm not sure what this place is called but 
it about 10-12km North of Gore(the GPS told me so!)). I think this 
is worth knowing about because if you ever get low significanly 
west of debert a short glide across the basin will deliever you to 
multiple landing strips and a much reduced retrieve.

Anyhow, a GPS is a great instrument to fly with, especially on x-
country. 

Phil