John keeps talking about flying, but he never shows up even when the conditions are favorable (see below). Maybe he needs that GPS just to get to the airport.
Saturday was a surprisingly busy day at the field. There were something like 28 flights. All seven of the club ships took at least one flight, and many of the private ships flew as well. Not tremendous conditions, but I guess cabin fever got the best of the membership after a long spell of wet weather. Thanks to Gary Helmstetter and Juan Mandelbaum for their help as FOs and all the other members who pitched in as well!
Sunday was a windy day. When I arrived there was the L-13 and a 2-33 as well as the Birddog sitting on the ground and a lot of experienced pilots standing around. By the time I parked the car the 2-33 was being towed back to the tiedown, with one person on each wing as well as a pilot in the back seat, lest the ship decide to take an unexpected flight. The L-13 followed shortly thereafter. I believe there were something like 8 flights for the day.
- Dave Cherkus (Saturday's SFO)
A few years ago I got some pictures of my house from my glider, so of course to complete the collection I needed to get some pictures of my glider from my house. It's about 13 miles NE of Sterling. Sunday morning I confidently told my wife to go out to the back yard around 4 pm and look up, and hopefully take a few pictures of me and my glider circling high above.
2 pm found me at 3000 feet near the airpot, vainly searching for usable lift among the shards and shreds blowing by at 25 knots. 2:30 found me needing a re-light and shocked to learn that GBSC apparently had shut down for the day, and MITSA was doing so too.
Our excellent new tow pilot, Ryan, was still game, and luckily Doug Jacobs had decided conditions warranted a try, so at 3 pm I had a canopy holder, a tow, and a new resolve to stay above 3000 feet. As luck would have it, this time we hit a coherent 5 knot thermal as the tow reached 3k, so I released, turned right into it, and didn't stop turning right until I had reached 6300. A growing wisp over Stow took me to 8000 feet just west of Boston's 30-nm radar circle. 3:45 found me over my house, but down to about 6800. No problem, there were clouds forming 3 or 4 miles upwind (a large parking lot, parade grounds, and new rail/truck depot at Devens are all thermal sources, and all aligned northwest of my house). I found that by flying upwind a mile or two, then circling under an approaching cloud, I could maintain 7 to 9k and stay in view of the house. The only complications were ice forming on the canopy whenever I got above 8500, and jets going by a couple miles south. I'm very familiar with that airway, since it's visible from my house, but it was still pretty challenging work wiping off ice, watching for jets, and maintaining altitude and position against the 30+ mph wind. My wife says she got good pictures, so I do not plan to do that again!
Around 4:30 I decided I had wasted enough of the terrific day, so roared upwind to Pepperell. The clouds continued to mark lift that averaged about 8 knots from 7k to 9k, so the soaring was nearly effortless except for the ice problem. Once I was 10+ miles from the jet traffic, I picked a slightly higher than average cloudbase and reached 9920 MSL, the high point of the flight, at about 5 pm. Upon reaching Pepperell I turned gratefully toward the sun, and headed for Jaffrey, then Gardner, then back to Sterling. Crossing the wind was even easier than flying upwind, and I lost only 500 feet using dolphin-style flight from Pepperell to Jaffrey. Still above 8000 approaching Gardner, and no longer concerned with ice now that flying toward the sun had warmed the cockpit to a balmy 33 degrees (it was 8.0 degrees outside, incidently, at 9920), I flew from Gardner to Sterling at 120 mph groundspeed, threw away the remaining 4k, and landed into a 25 mph headwind at 6:40. The airport was utterly deserted; even the black flies were gone.
I dragged the LP-49 back to the tiedown, searched fruitlessly for my brown sneakers for 15 minutes [Whoever stowed them: thanks, but where did you put them?], and as I drove away, discovered that my feet were STILL numb.
There were still a few new cumulus forming as the sun set. When I think about glider clubs shutting down their operations on days like Sunday it just boggles my mind.
- Gary
Since Kirk was flying S4 in the contest series this weekend I was resigned to just hanging around the gliderport and possibly crewing. After the morning's pilots meeting and task discussion for the "A" and "B" classes I decided to take the club's Lark IS28 for a flight and had the inspiration to join the race as a late contender. The CD acceded to my request and I ran around the gliderport looking for some "ballast" for the front seat. The problem with the Arizona Soaring Association's Lark is that due to bad painting and repairs the maximum payload is 340 pounds, which severely limits the circle of possible passengers considering my not insignificant mass. I finally located a suitable victim, a Japanese visitor who had just soloed in the 1-26 and had never been more than 5 miles from the field. I had only 1 flight in this Lark (and a grand total of 4 in any Lark) before this attempt so I was not sure if it was going to work out, and they gridded me right at the front of the group (a sacrificial lamb to test the thermal waters). I took a 2000' tow and immediately found the best sink around and found myself back at the end of the long takeoff line within a couple of minutes - I call it practicing takeoffs and landings. The second flight looked better, especially as there were now over 20 glass ships circling around the gliderport trying to get high enough to make a good start through the gate. I had enough time to raise the gear (it actually travels upwards less than the gear of the Blanik) and circled for about 5 minutes in zero sink before centering in on the sink and landing again.
There went my dreams of flying the big Lark XC for Saturday.
I wasn't daunted by my failure on Saturday (some call it stupidity) and attempted to fly the task. Sunday's weather wasn't terrific, with 10-15 knots of wind aloft and with the lift topping out at 9000' msl. I was assigned a relatively short task (compared to the "A" class) in the Lark and had to fly from Turf - Wickenburg (50KM) - New River (75KM) - Turf (25KM). I had found another victim for this flight, a fledgling glider pilot who worked at Luke AFB but had lots of power and jet time. He didn't show up until 10 minutes before takeoff and came carrying a huge backpack almost as large as a duffel bag containing enough supplies to last us for a week; it turns out that he had just come off an extended survival training and believed in being prepared. The Lark was gridded at the beginning of the flight line again and I took another 2000' tow into sink and thought that I was jinxed! Just before entering the pattern for a relight I managed to find a light thermal which gave me about 1000' of altitude. By this time there were other gliders in the air and I began trying to join their thermals. Each time I joined a gaggle I watched them climb away from me while my passenger was probably wondering what sort of a tyro pilot he had. After 30 minutes of struggle I finally connected with a thermal and we climbed to 8500msl; by this time the start gate was open and we passed through the top at 120knots. We headed off towards Wickenburg and it was disconcerting to watch the altimeter unwind quickly while the countryside passed slowly by underneath. One gets so used to flying a 40:1 ship that it becomes rather difficult to fly in one with a published 30:1 (and this model has more than it's fair share of dents) when new.
The thermals on course were not especially strong and all we could reach was 7000msl, which is less than 5000' agl; not a very comfortable altitude for flight over the unlandable desert. In addition, the Lark is a huge beast and I'd been told that I would incur the wrath of all present if I landed out at a field where I couldn't aerotow, so the number of possible landing places was further limited. After 2 hours we finally made it to the first turnpoint and headed back towards New River. 7000' ... 6000' ... 5000' ... 4000'. By this time I had chosen a long dirt strip and suggested that my passenger tighten his belts. On the upwind leg I found a bubble and cranked the Lark into a very tight thermal, I set the flaps to +2 and attempted to get above the pattern. Within 5 minutes we had gone from a certain landout to our highest altitude of 9000' and continued on our way. After some mental math we figured that we needed only 1000 more feet of altitude for a final glide; we continued on course and ignored weak thermals. By the time we found our next thermal we were 1000 feet below final glide, but this 4 knotter was strong and high enough to get us home and we screamed through the finish line at Vne at 2000' agl. This reserve altitude was needed, since the CD didn't see our finish (but he did get the glider behind us); I pulled up into a chandelle and crossed the finish line going the wrong way, but they decided to let that ride and called a good finish.
I'm amazed that the passenger survived the 4.5 hour long flight (3.2 hours task time) without any vertigo. I don't think I could have survived that without some queasiness!
Fly far and fast,
-Arnd