It's sort of a family tradition that we try to get into Yosemite on January the first, and I try to get in at least a little bit of climbing if possible. As with last year, I did an easy trad pitch and called it a day. After that, we walked around the Valley, cruised over to Curry Village to try to see where Glacier Point rockfall had squished some cabins, and generally soaked up the scenery.
The obligatory climbing butt shot. I'm on a beginner route that a lot of guides walk up in flip-flops, and I am unrepentantly wearing a helment, carrying three pitches of hardware, and sewing it up tight.
Above the rope-eating tree. Only a few feet off the deck its warm and toasty in the sun. My shoes are drying off and getting sticky, and it's a great day to be climbing and a great way to start the new year.
The Valley was absolutely beautiful that day.
Back in the shop on 2 January, puttering away at fitting the spars into the wing skins
On Saturday 3 January we drove over the hill to Reno to close out our travel trailer at Air Sailing. There are new rules about not keeping RVs at the gliderport over the winter, so we had to get rid of it. Fortunately, we found a good home for it without having to shred it and put it into a dumpster.
At the shop on 4 January, marking the spar butt locating fixture with alignment references for the wing spar.
Developing the fixtures that go on the spider legs to locate the spar shear web.
Alia helps static-test my first-article carbon stabilizer. One of the things I need to do soon is order in 600 lbs of sand to do a proper static test of this unit.
I hang ten on the fiberglass stabilizer we made early last year.
Homebuilt aviation is not for folks who don't try things at home.
page updated 5 January 2009 all text and graphics copyright (c) 2009 HP Aircraft,
LLC