The pelican is here!

After a month being build, twenty more days on a ship and a week waiting in customs, finally the Super Goat Kit ( made by M.H. Balogh ) is here!

Here are some of the pictures of the kit, still siting at the customs storage facility awaiting clearance from customs (and duties) to enter the country.

Crates fresh out of the shipping container

The wing ribs

Airframe

Other view

I'll keep you posted as we make progress on the project. 

What's in a name?

So, the plane is purchased and being build, the team is ready and the hangar is (or will be as soon as the chinook is done) ready to.. what is missing? but of course, a name !

All the aircrafts on our flying club have names. Our airfield being right by the beach, most names are bird or sea side related.  We got a Shark, a Tucan, a Hawk, a Duck, a Humming bird and soon to be here a Mike Sanding Goat (build by M.H. Balogh out of NY)

Since there are no goats around this area, we needed a name that would represent gliding around the coast, possibly skimming the powerful waves of the pacific. "The seagull" was an idea, but seagulls are quite slick, while the goat glider is anything but.

We needed a name that will match the spirit of freely flying, but from a primitive type. a sort of awkward flying contraption that somehow learned to harness the updrafts of the sea... 

And then it hit us.. a Pelican!

Anyone who has spend a summer in Lima is familiar with the ever present company of pelicans surfing above the lift created by the waves on the ocean. Since a kid I've seen pelicans, marveling how could they fly such long distances with barely a flap of their wings. Now an adult with 500+ hour flying gliders plus hundreds more flying paragliders, I can closely relate to the fun the Pelicans must be having while they soar over the sea. 

It is settled, the gliders name will be "The Pelican" and I have to say, the more I look at it, the more it resembles a goat glider !

Proudly admit, being addicted to flight.

The coast of Peru is pretty much a 1000 mile long and dry desert, only interrupted by the deltas of a few rivers coming down from the snow-caps of the majestic Andes mountains. 

The terrain is quite extreme.

 To the West, the pacific ocean extending all the way to Australia.

The bay view from aboard the Challenger

 To the East, ever growing mountains reaching 15'000 feet within 30 miles away from the sea.

At 16'000 ft, over the Andes aboard "the Condor" (Pipistrel Sinus) 

On this desert, somewhere around latitude 12° 23' South and longitude 76° 45' West, sits a small seaside town, where it exists a club of strange men (and women) who love flying more than anything.

The club hanger

Every weekend you can see them flying, building, fixing or just talking about flying.

We never argue! honest!

The club's name is Alas del Mar ( Ocean wings ) and the the club's home (better called "The hanger") sits on a large patch of flat land inserted right in between 400 ft tall hills that look like fingers as the ending of much larger arms coming all the way from up the  Andes.

I belong to that club and proudly confess being addicted to flight.  :)