0845: We started the day to gloomy overcast skies, and a forecast that looked blustery and windy. We spent the first 30 minutes doing some maintenance on the trailer's fuselage cradle. We had to add some hydraulic jack-oil in order to raise the fuselage high enough to get the landing gear down. Once we got that taken care of, we got the assembly of the glider taken care of in short order. In case you haven't noticed, the glider doesn't have any wings on it. The glider lives in a trailer (not pictured), and must be correctly assembled before every flight. We perform a preflight inspection, and I give Randall a cockpit briefing. The total assembly time is somewhere around 30 minutes, but this morning took a bit longer as I was trying to upgrade the software on the fancy flight computer.

Getting ready for the flight, I instructed Randall on how to use the parachute. Of course we have to take a before-photo!