Steve Paavola, a new club member, completed his BFR on Saturday, April 15th, after a nine year absence from soaring. Steve is both a cautious and excellent pilot and is ready to "soar" with the best of us. He also has part ownership in an ASW-24.
- Dave Zlotek
Due to a number of reasons, I've been sedentary for a while and have been stuck in Arizona - there are worse places to be. I've been working from home and have therefore been able to leave for the airport when conditions have warranted (and they have, often!). I've been lucky enough to have had a number of very interesting and long cross country flights so far and will detail just one interesting contest flight and my most recent 2 weekend flights.
This weekend promised to be a fantastic soaring one; a front had just passed through the valley and all of the private pilots showed up early and loaded up with water and discussed plans for the year's first 500Km flight. By 11am a couple of Cus began to build over the mountains and by noon all of us had lined up on the runway (with me in front).
An inauspicious beginning - I took a 1.4k tow into heavy sink and got very low over the airport before finding a thermal wide enough for the heavy ship. The thermals were quite strong (but very unruly), averaging about 5 knots but they were topping out at 6600 feet MSL (about 5000 AGL) which is about 4000 feet less than normal for this time of year. 3 other ships and myself did a contest start and headed off for the 110 mile distant first turnpoint. We flew as a group until I decided to milk a nice thermal that ended up as a -3 knotter while the others flew through the heavy +2 knot street... Needless to say, I caught up to them at Wickenburg airport but about 2000 feet below them. I had to turn back for an approach to Wickenburg airport and started dumping water on the downwind leg but caught a small bubble which quickly strengthened to a 6 Knot thermal that got me back to base. We decided to amend the task because the conditions were not that good and fought our way several miles further west before returning. I left the others and headed for the hills where the conditions looked better (and I heard a glider report that he was at 12k in wave (we had 20 knots of wind)). I didn't find the wave but did reach 9000 feet and managed to get a total of 323KM done.
Yesterday was even tougher flying, but this time the weather wasn't the main cause. I had loaded up fully with water and, when I was about 50KM away from home, noticed an unpleasant cold sensation in the seat of my pants. This was rather disconcerting as I hadn't had any bladder problems and the water bottle that I had along was still full. I turned and ran for home while the wet sensation continued to expand and by the time I made my pattern the seat pan was awash in water. It was rather embarrassing to get out of the glider with completely wet pants! I took out the seatpan and shipped a couple of liters of water from the fuselage and also had to pop open my parachute to let it dry out. I still can't figure out how the water leaked, either!
On a more somber note, I'd like to detail a rather less humorous episode that happened to me on a contest flight a couple of weeks ago. Instead of the usual task the director called a modified POST, with the first turnpoint being Salome (100 miles away) and a minimum of 3 hours. The flight was very challenging but the thermals were impressive. I flew at cloudbase and had almost a quarter inch of rime build up on my leading edges and flew in heavy snow in lift while far underneath me the Nimbus 3 radioed heavy sink and hoped that he could do a straight-in approach to the nearest airport (he made it, but didn't use any spoilers or flaps and wouldn't have made it otherwise). Even though my wings were covered in snow and ice I had a very good line and was doing extremely well in terms of speed; I chose two more turnpoints to the north (where the 7000-8000 peaks are) and was about to head in for my McReady 6knot final glide from about 40 miles when I heard another pilot radio a contest finish in heavy squalls at the gliderport. I chose not to return in the heavy sink around Turf and chose another turnpoint to the northwest of the range, at Cordes Junction. The wind was coming from the WNW and I saw a line of clouds leading from about where my turnpoint was back to Turf and was certain that I would win the day with a very good average speed.
I headed away from Turf and my troubles began when my glide computer told me that I had left final glide for Turf. I hit -3 knots of sink that continued for miles and miles. I quickly went from over 12000 feet to about 8000 and saw that the peaks that I had to traverse were no longer far below me but almost at my level. I did some visual math and concluded that I could cross them with a bit of altitude to spare. By this time I was over the high desert with absolutely no landout possibilities and I was left with no option but to proceed. I hit even more sink and got so low that I couldn't cross the top of the mountains but had to divert to the west (away from home and the turnpoint) in order to cross in a notch between two outcroppings. I made the notch with about 100 feet to spare and got one of the biggest shocks of all my glider flights - the mountains didn't drop away steeply and give me a thousand feet of ground clearance! The slope was quite gradual on this side of the mountains, I guess about 40:1 which is about what my glider was getting. I spent the next 30 minutes between 10 and 200 feet above the ground looking for anything like a thermal, while far above me was a picture-perfect cloud street that I couldn't connect to.
This side of the Harquahala mountains is a great example of the high Sonoran desert. Not a single road, not a single habitation! Lots of scrub and rocks and ravines. I don't think I would have made it out had there been any large Saguaro cactii. I was very, very worried as nobody could hear me on the radio, nobody knew which turnpoint I had gone to, and I didn't have an ELT. After spending a subjective eternity very close to the ground I finally saw the first sign of civilization - the Cordes strip and approach road showed up in the distance and it looked like I might just be able to make it. The strip is at the top of a bluff and, much to my chagrin, I had enough altitude to barely clear the bluff but not enough to clear the electrical lines that went along it! I had to turn into the valley and continue heading downhill with no hope of a safe landout.
The fates were with me, as about a mile further on a dirt road wound it's way down the valley's side slope to the flat wash in the middle. Now I knew that I wouldn't require an epitaph but just a good repair facility. The road was relatively wide but, as most desert roads are, ploughed out of the desert with embankments higher than the road itself. But in my mind's eye this road was better than any airfield! I flew over a campsite with a couple of jeeps in it and circled a couple of times in zero sink to ensure that they saw me and then chose the flattest, widest portion of the road as my landing site. I didn't have enough altitude for a full pattern, just a left base and final. I popped over a small mileage marker and put the ship down - only a couple of scratches on the wingtips from bushes and palo verde!
Within minutes I had a number of people around the glider - both from the campsite I had overflown as well as from another that I hadn't noticed. I think about 20 people showed up within ten minutes, plus another 2 jeepfuls later on. They gave me beer (domestic) and I a number of them got into the cockpit to get their pictures taken - until a 12 year old got in and wouldn't get out again, he like it so much that he closed the canopy and locked himself in (he stayed in a half-hour before getting bored and leaving of his own accord). By this time I'd gotten my cell phone from it's inaccessible location behind the seat (another lesson learned) and arranged for a pickup.
It turns out that I had been fortunate to land where I did - another half mile downwards the road became so bad that I would have torn out my gear - my retrieve told me he was in first gear the whole time and even so I lost the ventilator on the trailer due to vibrations. We disassembled quickly and headed out the other way, the road became a bit wider within a mile but the berms were so high that I would have torn my wings out.
I won't speculate as to the mistakes made and lessons learned on this flight, I'll leave that to your imaginations. But I will say that I've always told myself to leave at least one option open to me at all times. Well, this time I left myself with no options and almost paid very dearly for it...
-Arnd.