The Soaring Report is pretty thin this week with only one entry, and that from Arizona to boot. I was hoping at least for Mark Koepper's report on the last 1000 vertical feet of his Sunday flight. But Arnd's report has enough flying to make up for it and to make the rest of us envious.
After traveling pretty much all of the soaring season, I managed to convince my employer to let me work from my Phoenix home for the week before the long Labor Day Weekend. Working from home meant spending at least 10 minutes of each day staring at the "ON" switch of my PC before switching on the other system and downloading the local soaring forecast. The only twinge of guilt that I felt was that I was leaving my LS-4 tied down outside for the whole week.
The weather patterns weren't really ideal for Arizona. The monsoons were still present and made the 90-105 degree ground temperatures pretty unbearable with their concomitant high humidity. Most of the skies were covered by mid afternoon with very slowly dissipating cumulus remains and by 16:00 the first thunderstorms would start to fire up. On the up side, it was an absolute pleasure to be able to go cross country with clouds to use as signposts instead of the usual nerve-wracking method of heading off into the blue and watching the rocks, brush and Saguaro cactii grow larger and larger.
I managed to fly every single day, 5 of which were part of the "Southwest Soaring Championships" non-sanctioned competition (non-sanctioned because all of the potential ground personnel wanted to fly, so we used GPS starts and finishes so that everybody [with GPS loggers] could participate). The start cylinder had a 3sm radius with no ceiling (top of lift) and since we all had GPS there was no STI. Unfortunately I had no water ballast and the contest was an unhandicapped single class (essentially 15 meter) one, so even if I (as a pilot) could have kept up I would have had no chance. In addition, we flew long tasks and I had a tough time completing them due to the unballasted ship and had to milk a lot of weak thermals towards the end of they day just to make it around. But it was a lot of fun flying nonetheless.
Date Time Location Type Dist Task
======== ===== ======== ======== ==== ====
27/08/99 04:25 Estrella Declared 334 (52)Cordes Junction->(45)
Buckeye->(134)El Tiro->(102)
28/08/99 02:55 Estrella Contest 232 (72)Paloma->(63)Mobile->(42)
Gila Bend->(50)
29/08/99 02:46 Estrella Contest 224 (71)Bakers Acres->(80)Mobile->(42)
Potters->(32)
30/08/99 04:18 Turf Free 249 (32)Black Canyon->(91)Buckeye->(63)
Lake Pleasant-p>(30)Castle Wells->(32)
31/08/99 04:00 Turf Free 165 (32)Black Canyon->(36)Carefree->(33)
Turf->(33)Carefree->(33)
01/09/99 03:54 Turf 300FAI 313 (71)Forepaugh->(103)Carefree->(85)
Wickenburg->(54)
02/09/00 04:00 Turf Free 244 (33)Carefree->(35)Dam->(39)
Coyner->Forepaugh(70)->(71)
03/09/99 05:01 Turf Declared 325 (54)Wickenburg->(17)Forepaugh->(61)
Salome->(126)Turf->(33)Black Canyon->(33)
04/09/99 03:10 Turf Contest 315 (71)Forepaugh->(60)Salome->(137)
New River->(30)Bean->(16)
05/09/99 06:09 Turf Contest 415 (123)Paulden->(165)Salome->(127)
06/09/99 06:08 Turf Contest 519 (180)Seligman->(93)
QtrCircleJ->(119)Salome->(127)
The overall weather conditions got better with each day. By 03/09 the moisture laden Mexican monsoons had blown away to leave a more westerly/southwesterly winds at between 0 and 20 knots at 15,000'. The cloud bases went up from 8000' to 16,000' on the 6th (terrain for most of the course was 1600' at Turf up to 8000' in the mountains).
I decided to finally complete some of my FAI flights, and used the flight on the 1st as a legal 300Km FAI triangle and then used the flight on the 5th as an even better one! The 6th was the 500Km flight as well as being used for both the gold altitude gain and 5 hour duration. What a thrill for me to finally get all that paperwork done!
There is a slight lie for the contest flight on the 29th, I actually landed out 2 miles short of Turf! It had been a good flight and due to the weak conditions I was keeping up pretty well with all the ballasted ships, but the last turnpoint was in the flatlands where no thermals were being triggered. I made my way to the turn with my glide computer telling me that I was merely 500 feet below a final glide with a McReady 3 setting and a bit over 40 miles to go. But there was no lift and steady stable sink, so I kept on dialing back the McReady and slowing down, but the magical -500 never got any better. By that time I was very low and using gopher farts for lift sources. With a 40:1 ship at best L/D 500 feet equates to about 3 miles, so I needed only a bit more altitude to make it home. I found a 0 sink area over the area I had chosen to land (a part of the desert where street patterns had been bulldozed years before) and while turning I saw a cleared area even close to Estrella which I knew I could make and that might trigger enough lift to get me home. I headed towards this spot and found out that (a) there was no lift and (b) that it was a crop duster strip. The strip part was fortunate, in that I ended up making in a straight in approach.
After landing and pushing the glider off the dirt I started getting nervous, as I knew that the rest of the gang were rabidly waiting for me to landout and I had visions of all of them showing up in force in their campers and jeeps and helping me de-rig the glider (with 20 people at a cheap McDonalds dinner rate I would be out at least 200$, and some of those pilots are pretty big chaps with appropriately sized appetites). But luckily the towplane came in and I had my first IFR takeoff ever, due to the dust on the runway - next time I'll close those vents!
The last 3 days were all done with great conditions, as we even had cumulus cloud streets forming in the mountains that even went in the right direction. I hadn't expected such a high cloud base after having to deal with 8K cloud bases all week, so on Saturday I managed to pull some tendons in my shoulders while trying reach the oxygen mask, which was securely stowed behind and underneath my seat. I did get the mask on (at 14,000') and spent most of time on all three days with the system on. On Sunday the bases went up to about 17,000', although my highest point was a bit over 16,000'. Uncomfortably cool at that altitude, a marked contrast to the 100 degree temps on the ground, but I was so exhilarated that I didn't notice anything during the flights. Because of my slow speeds of around 60mph I had to complete the last part of the two long flights in the weak lift just prior to sunset, so I ended up milking the last 1knot thermals from very far out and then enjoyed smooth final glides. On both days I got up to over 10,000' towards the end and had final glides of over 100Km at speeds between 70 and 100 knots. In retrospect this wasn't a mistake, as others who were flying in the same area at lower altitudes had to land out at local airfields (unfortunately none of them were flying in the contest).
Although it would have nice to join the GBSC for Franconia I will never forget this exhausting but exhilarating week of cross country soaring out of Phoenix.
-Arnd.
[End of the Soaring Report.]