Nick Legenza gave me a great tow, Thanks Nick. I hope you are able to build some PIC time that is so necessary for you aviation endeavors. Friday had some challenges. I was only able to fly 23 miles in my first hour. It took me 35 minutes and two thermals to finally get up to 6000 msl. After I was finally able to get high things worked out better. I had a nice tour of the country side. Went to Lake Lawn first, then Poplar Grove then Rochelle then back north to Kirkpatrick back south to Aero Lake Estates and finally back to SSI. 191 miles. I was trying to see if I could fly Gold distance which I made. (186.7 miles) My high was 7700 msl and my averager had my thermals at 3 knots. There were a few spots at 8 knots. All in all a nice 4 hour ans eleven minutes. I feel for those who had trouble. I found plenty of 8 knots down and I can easily see why some folks weren’t able to stick today. And the smoke was awful. Most of the time I could only see about 5 miles. I hope it blows away sooner rather than later. Again Congrats to Nick, nice work! John Lincoln