Funny Day

Ok, funny thing happened today. 
It was a partly sunny day with the low angle sun peeking through the clouds with a steady wind coming from the East.  I decided I needed to go out and fly my flying wing glider during the nice pocket of good weather.  I had about 3 or so hours before I needed to be at work so I headed up on HW 89 on a viewpoint over looking Lake Powell and the Page area.

  Here the wind was producing some excellent updrafts on the hillside and cliff edge.  I was able to throttle way back, and simply cruise around riding various updrafts.  Several ravens were about riding the same air currents, but they weren’t as playful as I anticipated with the plane.  Some brave ravens would swoop in for a look, but as soon as I made any effort in flying next to them or near one, all the ravens would fly away.  Must be too noisy.  After a few minutes of getting a feel where the updrafts were, I noticed some movement in the brush below.  It looked like a jackrabbit scampering along.  I figured the rabbit must have thought my glider was an eagle or hawk and was moving away from the aircraft.  Then it hit me.  It wasn’t running away from the plane, it was running towards it!  I banked left, and it turned left.  I looked closer to the movement, and it wasn’t a jackrabbit at all.  It was a coyote!  The coyote had lost most of its winter coat, and was looking much more desert like.  He kept on running about chasing the glider.  Much of his behavior mimicked Emma’s cat Pawsi as it chases moths around the house.  Mouth open, head locked onto the target, and trotting along underneath in torment of the inability to fly.  I had a blast circling around, and zipping past ridge tops all while the coyote was in hot pursuit.  At one instance I tried to spook the coyote and dive bomb him, and perhaps get close enough to get a different reaction.  I had to pull up sharply, because I thought the dog was going to jump up and bite my plane!  I started laughing out loud at the sight, and the coyote glanced at me momentarily, and started to trot down lower to some of the canyons below.  Every now and then, I could get him to react a bit when I cut the throttle low, and buzzed the sagebrush.  I had several minutes of fun with that darn coyote.  I wasn't able to get any footage of the coyote because it was difficult enough negotiating the turbulent air with two hands flying.  Using another hand to blindly shoot some photos is one thing, but to zoom in enough to see the coyote would have resulted in me crashing my plane without question.  Then I'd have to patch up the plane not only of the cracked, dented wing, but also potential coyote teeth punctures in the airframe.

The rest of the daylight was spent with soaring the updrafts, swapping batteries, and charging one with my car battery while in flight with the second.  The sun set behind the mountains, and the wind died down, so I headed on back to Page to pack my things for work that night.