Soaring Report for July 13, 1999

Joe Schena - An easy Saturday

Saturday was a bit breezy, 25-30 knot winds across the runway all day. I made 1 pattern tow with Tony for the x-wind practice. I spent the rest of the day at the picnic table talking with friends.

Joe Schena

Dick Ruel - Saturday and Monday- a Silver Quest

After a four and a half hour flight two weeks ago, my latest obsession has been to get my five hour Silver duration. Saturday didn't look good, but I was ready, with food, water, charts, barograph, a fancy relief system and lots of determination. It was a good half hour practice! Sunday I couldn't make it to the field due to other commitments. Sunday night I got a call from Mike P., saying that Dick Usen could take a few people up at eleven but couldn't spend too much time there. Was I interested? Yes, but I had lots of work as Mondays are very busy and I had appointments. So that was that, I wasn't going to fly. So, Monday morning at six while I was working out on the tread mill and watching the morning news, the weather lady states that this was going to be "the nicest day of year with lots of pretty, puffy, cumulus clouds. Much like yesterday, without the wind she says. I immediately started thinking of ways that I could make it to the field. I met Mike there at ten. On the way to the airport I called Karel Pesata to make sure I did everything right. Got the barograph going and Bob Boyd signed it off and the unit was sealed. I took off right after Mike at 12:45. The flight was great, but after two hours the skies to the west were becoming overcast. I thought for sure this was the end of the lift. I along with other gliders, (John Bergeson, Bob Boyd, Bob Banta, and Mike Pitoniak) were flying in the bluer sky closer to Fitchburg, and were able to maintain lift for quite a while. After four hours, no lift, and over the airport at 1900' I was preparing to land when out of nowhere a 5knot thermal found me, and I was up to 4k in no time. Unfortunately fifty minutes later, I was on the ground. Yes that right, four hours fifty minutes! Ten minutes short of my silver! Yep that was good practice too! Not all was lost as I did manage to get my Silver altitude gain, and my relief system worked well.

Dick Ruel

Sunday 7/11/99 - 300K - NOT!, Peter Stauble

I received conflicting forecasts on cloud bases for Sunday. FSS claimed 4.5K in the Worcester area and 6K in the Laconia area. Kevin Ford's thermal index claimed 10K. Figuring I'd shoot myself if Kevin was right and I didn't try for diamond goal. I declared a flight from 3B3 to LCI to ORE and back. I launched around 12:30 and worked my way towards Brookline NH. Lift wasn't as good as it looked, I reached Brookline without ever getting above 5K and it took me an hour. 10 mins. Later I had only got a couple more miles north but had climbed to 500 feet below cloud base at 6K. My next planned airport on route was 24 miles ahead with a x-head wind and there was a very large blue area ahead. I started reviewing the reasons not to press on and came up with a big enough list to not venture into the blue yonder. The list included, cloud bases not as high as I would have liked, race day at Loudon (heavy traffic for an auto or aero retrieve), slow progress so far, lots of chatter on 123.3 about how tough it was to get any altitude and being chicken. A big blue street now nicely identified my direct route back to 3B3. So I decided to deviate west under lift clouds towards AFN. About 4 miles south of AFN I had climbed to 6.3K and final glided back to 3B3. Total time was about 2:15, distance covered was 64 sm. Of course the lift was much better and more consistent once I got back to 3B3. I think next time I'll try a less windy day , start a little later, and of course, a higher cloud base would be nice.

Arnd Wussing--Flying Away

After two fine weekends of soaring in Boston I returned to Phoenix for a week of vacation before continuing on my travels. When I got to Phoenix I found out, rather to my surprise, that my glider was no longer there but had for reasons unknown convinced my partner to drive it up to Parowan, Utah. I assume that S4 wanted to get out of the 100+ degrees temperature and take a look at the beautiful scenery in the Rockies. I couldn't let this opportunity pass and threw my suitcase into the car, filled up the gas tank and took off for the wild north country on Saturday morning. I took an alternate scenic route and made it to the Parowan gliderport in only 8 1/2 hours of driving just in time to see most of the 14 gliders present arrive in a contest finish. No S4. I started getting visions of glider wings and fuselage looking like something melted from a surrealistic painting when Kirk (my partner) radioed in his approach and made a good landing. The Parowan runway is paved and has a length of at least 6000 feet, but a rather pronounced slope makes landing to the north and pushing the glider back an exercise in aerobics.

As the wind was blowing at 20-30 knots with gusts to over 40, Sunday turned out to be a washout and I decided to install a radio that Tim Mara at Wings&Wheels had cajoled me into buying. I took the opportunity that morning and inspected the monster that was going to tow us the next day. In fear and respect I approached the behemoth and inspected the Ag-Cat with it's long double wingspan and 9-cylinder rotary engine that put out several hundred horsepower. Since Parowan lies at 6000' a workhorse like the Ag-Cat is absolutely essential; but it makes for a very interesting tow, especially if one gets low and into the double wake turbulence of the biplane!

Monday began more auspiciously and the morning's pilots meeting had a cat's cradle task set with a turnpoint about 60 miles to the north, then one about 15 to the south, and a final one just 30 miles to the north for 300Km. Kirk and I had installed the new radio in a makeshift fashion and were ready to go. I lined up close to the front of the line at 1pm and had lots of time to get worried about the tow. I discovered some of problems associated with towing behind the Ag-Cat very quickly after departing from the ground. I had aligned myself with the lower set of wings and had to use both hands on the controls of the LS-4 to keep somewhere behind the towplane (normally the controls are so light that I always get an adrenaline rush on takeoff in fear that I've forgotten to connect the ailerons). I thought I was going through intense rotor activity until I aligned myself with the upper wings and life become a lot easier.

The first tow ended in a release over the ridge at 3000' AGL right in lift and after only a couple of minutes of searching for lift I hit a 4 knot thermal that had me scrambling to turn on the oxygen and get the system working at 12500'. I found myself topping out at 15K over the Brian Head ski area (10500) to the west of the airport and then took off on the assigned task. I managed to catch up to a gaggle of gliders but by the time I had gotten to cloud base at 15K in that thermal they had departed and I chose the east side of the valley, which is about 30 miles wide; and while fighting the continuous 5Knots of sink I heard on the radio about the wonderful streeting on the west side . I reached the first turnpoint, Sulphurdale, and found out that even though it was marked as an airport it was unlandable, as was the surrounding countryside. This was somewhat disconcerting, as I was only about 2000' above the turnpoint. I took a gamble on the prevailing winds and headed for a prominent ridge a couple of miles from the turnpoint and found a 1Knot thermal that let me get higher on the ridge. The mountains above me towered to over 10000' but I spent all my time on the return trip below the ridges. I didn't have to scrape chlorophyll from the wingtips but it wasn't for lack of trying. As soon as my glide computer told me that I had a conservative final glide made I hit my first strong thermal on the return trip and it got me over the high hills and to a 15 mile long vertical cliff face of about 200 feet. The wind was only about 10 knots but perpendicular to this beautiful stony red ridge and I rode it at 100 Knots at cliff level up towards it's termination at the Brian Head ski resort at 10500', and when that ridge ran out a huge thermal that pegged my varios and later averaged 8knots sucked me up into the cloud that had been forming. As my slow progress had taken so long I decided not to take the final turnpoint and turned for the second turnpoint, Cedar City, and finally Parowan - a leisurely final glide in the high country of Utah.

The next day had me flying again, and Kirk and I had done some more work on the new radio. The task for the day was simple: fly to the Payson racetrack and back. The down side was that Payson was over 250Km to the north along the valley. Kirk and I feverishly worked on the electrics and finished in time to get the ship out on the line at 1Pm. I was 6th in line and with only the one tow plane and a long cycle I knew that it would be a while before I could begin; but the Cus were just beginning to form over the hills. The first pilots had gained enough height to depart by the time I got to the head of the queue and my dismay was almost unbearable when turning on the main power switch did exactly nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Nichts! I got out and pushed the glider off the line and got a multimeter to find the cause of the problems. The Battery had power but the master power bar at the front didn't - and then I recalled putting a little too much elbow grease into the turtledeck cover and the distinct "give" when it went into place - it must have ripped out a power connector. Since the turteldeck could only be removed with the wings dismounted my choice was made quickly and I got back in line with a borrowed handheld radio and my backup GPS. Even though I've only got a small (logarithmic) uncompensated Winter I figured that ANY flight is better than none at all.

Fortunately the Ag-Cat dropped me off in lift and I had some time to get used to the uncompensated vario; as I tended to use only the electric one. The flight was already exhilarating since it was by far the most quiet one I'd ever had - no beeping or buzzing tones and the radio was surprisingly silent (something to do with the state of the ON/OFF switch, I think ). By this time the Cu's had really begun to form all over the valley and the mountains and it was possible to run the line of clouds at 80 to 90 knots without losing any altitude. Even though I had no water on board, I was catching up to the 15meter class ships since I'd opted for the eastern ridges and the others had elected to use the western route. My first intimation of problems came when, after dodging virga and losing altitude, I decided to circle and saw the _very_ dark clouds behind me. And "home" was over 80 miles away already. I found the comm frequency and soon heard the bleating of the other pilots on the west side of the valley. I gathered they had the same trepidation that I had. Within minutes I could see isolated showers in every direction and lightning coursing through each of them. A spectacular display which I would have preferred to see in the third person... Since my side of the valley was still working and things looked far better to the north, I continued on the task until I was about 15 miles north of Sciprio airport. The cloud street I was cruising under ended abruptly and with no other landable opportunities to the north I turned back. I had hoped that the whole weather system and overdevelopment in the valley would cycle and that the return trip would be a piece of cake but, of course, I had been overly optimistic and was already in danger of not making it back to Sciprio - I would have to detour at least 20 miles in rain and the 9000' of ground clearance wouldn't be enough. I saw a pretty cumulus forming behind a wall of rain and decided to risk it. It immediately became apparent that it wasn't rain I was flying through but SNOW and the canopy was immediately almost opaque. Why don't gliders have windshield wipers? The varios pegged at -10 but the Cu gave me enough lift to gain a bit of the 3000' I'd lost and time for the wings to dry off. While thermalling underneath this cloud and trying to decide what could be saved from this fligh I listened to the other pilots discussing their options (from the safety of the other side of the valley). A couple of daredevils decided to use their altitude to make a run for Beaver airport and I though that there was probably safety in numbers and headed west. Only 30 miles to them should have needed only 4500 at almost best L/D but with all the sink I reached where they had _been_ with double that altitude loss and started looking for acceptable fields. There was a very large black lava area which had been in the sun and it gave me a 1 knot thermal that let me listen into the intrepid explorers ahead of me - a running commentary of "100 feet below 0McReady final glide", "200 below", "we have it made". The first two ships made it to Beaver and I decided to head after them. I found one rainshower in which I managed to find lift and gained 1000 feet even though the noise in the cockpit was overwhelming. I didn't have a flight computer to guide me but since there were no other airports reachable I had no choice but to decide for a final glide for the last 30 miles. I flew at best L/D and continually glanced at the hand held GPS and the altimeter. My mental math told me that I had enough for a straight-in but not enough for a pattern; but Beaver airport was obscured behind some showers and I suddenly remembered that many GPS turnpoints were offset from the target itself - hopefully this offset was to my benefit but I had no choice; the air was completely stable. One pilot reported landing at Sulphurdale (previous day's turnpoint) and explained that he had landed in a field _next_ to the runway, as it was in better shape. Another wasn't sure if he could make Beaver but preferred attempting the ride over inhospitable terrain over going "aux vaches" at Sulphurdale. Not very encouraging news for me. After reaching the point of no return my calculations told me that I wouldn't make it but a long stretch of 0 sink to 1/2 knot of lift saved me from using an irrigated field and I had time to circle around the airfield and see 5 gliders lined up before entering the pattern and landing. Within a couple of minutes the last ship came in for a high-speed low pass and, since we were alone on the field, we gave him a royal reception. Soon all 7 ships were tied down in preparation for the coming squalls and our crews started arriving. So did the police, there had been reports of "drinking and raucous behavior" (perhaps the twitching curtains on the house across the field should have given us some indication of habitation) but in reality we knew with certainty that mooning the last pilot coming in was a mistake... Fortunately the police departed without any altercations and, in pouring rain, the gliders were disassembled and the 30+ mile return trip in a long trailer convoy was begun.

[End of report]