LSXC Update #6 (August 3)

Sat., Aug. 3 Bruce Goldsmith makes his declared goal to Chupadera Ranch, 273 km (170 miles) to the NW of Edinburg, close to the Mexican border. Both Bruce and Adrian made the goal, however Adrian had declared a goal to Carrizo Springs(180 miles), which was about 30 miles to the east of Chupadera Ranch. About 62 miles before goal, after flying around Laredo, Adrian decided that the east winds would make his goal more difficult to reach so he chose to land at the Chupadera Ranch. Bruce was flying the Airwave Magic 3 and Adrian was flying the new prototype of the Airwave 10 (Large). (first picture above is a trio of Adrian on launch, flying over south Texas towards goal, and celebrating with Bruce and Markus)

Bruce Goldsmith contributes his account of the flight:

We had been towing all week from Edinburg Airfield in search of records. This morning Adrian declared one goal and I another close to the Mexican border because it looked like winds were more SE that morning. I took the first tow up a 10:30am releasing at 10:37am over the airfield with an altitude of 1870' agl. The start point we were using was Edinburg Airfield, specifically a point marked by a parked DC3 on the airfield close to the terminal buildings that is used for spare parts. I photographed this in sector and then drifted slowly down wind with the weak morning thermals, and cloudbase at 2296'. Adrian Thomas launched 15 minutes later and followed me. After 1 hour I had flown 16 miles which was hardly a record breaking speed. Adrian caught me up after about 2 hours, and we flew the rest of the flight together. Before launch I had entered the coordinates of Laredo International airport in my GPS so I could ensure that we did not get closer than the 5 miles which was the limit of the airspace. In fact our track took us to 12 miles from the airfield at the closest point at around 4:00. By this time cloudbase had risen to 6561' which made the going easier. At this point Adrian agreed to come with me to my goal field rather than go to his own, which was very good of him seeing as it was 5pm and we still had 62 miles to fly. The wind had now turned more Easterly and was blowing us towards Mexico, so for the last part of the flight we had to fly crosswind to avoid crossing the Rio Grande into Mexico. We pulled out of the last thermal at 3300' to arrive at goal with plenty of height at 7:00. I took the goal pictures and was happy to find the GPS coordinates that I had taken from the map for the airfield was in fact the middle of the runway. Adrian took some pictures of me over the goal with his digital camera, and then landed first, and was also able to take pictures of my landing. At the end of the airfield was a house with a truck outside and 3 dogs running around. I flew over the house with 328' and shouted loudly to get someone to come outside and witness my landing (the more witnesses the better), I got a dog to bark but nobody came out, so I landed next to Adrian on the runway. We left the gliders out and walked to the house where we met Mr. and Mrs. Rodriguez. They were inside with the AC on and were watching TV, and they came out to look at our paragliders and pack them away. It turned out that two of the dogs were actually pigs, and the other one was a very friendly Labrador. Chupadera Ranch is a private ranch and you cannot get in there as the gates are locked so we could not get our retrieve driver, Markus Villinger, to come and pick us up. There was no mobile phone coverage either and we had lost radio contact an hour earlier when the batteries on both our radios ran out. Fortunately the Rodriguez couple offered to take us to Carrizo Springs which was the closest town 30 miles away, where we were able to meet up with Markus. We got back to our motel in Edinburg at 1:30am that night, thanks to Markus.

A few days after Bruce's record flight, the Governor of Texas stopped off at the Edinburg Airport. Gov. Perry had met us on an earlier visit and was aware of our event. We told him about the world record and showed him the route and goal that Bruce had flown. He informed us that the Chupadera Ranch was owned by previous Gov. Dolph Briscoe. He also introduced us all to a NY Times reporter. We gave the Governor an AAS t-shirt and got a special "thank you" note in return. It's always nice to have friends in high places. (see photos above)

We took the guys to South Padre before they left and they tried out some dune soaring while we were there (see photo above). It was a fun time!