Me and my dad (orrin Smith) made a trip up to the craters this last weekend to get some of my firts high altitude flights in!

We got out to merriam by 8 am saturday and it was blowing up the north face a steady ten miles an hour. i hurried up and set up and did a good preflight on a pretty well used, slightly abused, but still flyable 195 falcon that i had just bought off of Chris Thompson. Threw on my Z5 harness which i also snaged off of Chris and walked up to launch. Conditions were the same so i hooked in and did a hang Check. yelled a loud " CLEAR" Walk jog run and i was in the air!! I grew up my whole life watching my dad fly and always saying to myself i would one day join him in the air, and there i was flying! the Flight plan was do some 180s out in front of launch and land at the north west lz at the bottom of merrium. followed the flight plan and slowly sunk out and had a nice landing. threw the glider on my dads truck still asembled and did it again! i did that 4 times till the wind direction switched coming up the east side of merriam in light cycles. My new flight plan was to fly over the spine where the road comes up the hill look for any little bubbles of lift and head out to the lz with plenty of altitude make a good approach and land. so I had a excellent launch in a light cycle and flew out over the road hit no lift and head out to the LZ. On my way out my dads back up Mast Air Vario started cherping!! I counted to 4 and it was still going so i turned and made a full circle in lift and before i knew it i was back up levle with launch! I played around there for quite a while and cought several thermals and started to sink out. I headed out to the LZ unzipped made a good approach with plenty of speed and had a nice landing to cap off my first soaring flight which lasted 40 minutes!! after that i had 2 more extended sled rides down to the LZ for a total of seven flights about 1 hour 10 minutes of airtime!!

Cant wait to get back in the air and fly miller saturday!!