By Ted Grussing
… this greenhead is just beginning his body rotation to flare, cut his airspeed and lower his landing gear before touchdown on the water … then his webbed feet become water skis as he quickly loses speed and settles into the water … looks like he is focused on the spot he intends to touch down and everything will now follow automatically.
One drawback of emails, is that when you hit the send button, it is sent. Right after I sent the last group last night, I reread the text and experienced a “whoops” moment when I realized that I had used the dry adiabatic lapse rate instead of the standard lapse rate to calculate temperatures.
The standard lapse rate is 2C per thousand feet or 3.6F per thousand feet … much more real world. The dry adiabatic rate is used in determining the cooling rate of a rising airmass to determine how high the convective lift will remain strong enough to provide lift to a sailplane and you use the 3C per thousand feet for this calculation. Hot air is less dense than cooler air and thus rises and once it reaches parity with the general airmass, you cease rising … actually before that, as sailplanes have a minimum sink rate and in the case of Mariah it is 165’ per minute, so I need air that is rising more than that to climb when flying in glider mode. NOAA provides area soaring forecasts in many areas and Flagstaff is one of them. There is also a private website I subscribe to which has one for Sedona. Nice to know if you are going to be getting lift if you plan on soaring, also how strong the lift is and how high the useable lift will be. Enough, but thanks to several friends who caught the whoops moment too.
Ducks and others fly high and fast too. I think it was in 2011 on our way back from the Grand Canyon, Corky, spotted a Greenhead Mallard like this one passing us just off the right wing tip … we were at 10,000’ over the Plateau and it had passed us and was gone by the time I could get a camera free.
Time to wrap the day, espresso in mere hours. Have a terrific day and enjoy it and those you meet and greet … life is truly wonderful!
Cheers
Ted
Know thou thyself, and live to please thy soul
… by kind words and gentle brotherhood,
Love men and truth, and poverty most like
Will dine with you, but peace will feed your soul.
— Max Ehrmann
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The easiest way to reach Mr. Grussing is by email: ted@tedgrussing.com
In addition to sales of photographs already taken Ted does special shoots for patrons on request and also does air-to-air photography for those who want photographs of their airplanes in flight. All special photographic sessions are billed on an hourly basis.
Ted also does one-on-one workshops for those interested in learning the techniques he uses. By special arrangement Ted will do one-on-one aerial photography workshops which will include actual photo sessions in the air.
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