My Computer has been down for the last few weeks. Rohn Kelley now has the "A" & "B" badges And Ken Woodard Has a Bronze Badge.
The L-23 is a great Ship to fly. It is quiet and silky smoooooth. TJ
Saturday was Gerry's "Duo Day", and he kindly invited me to fly with him. The day started early with strong northerly winds, and DJ was up and out early. We dawdled for breakfast in the cafe. The Duo went together faster than the smaller ships parked on either side, with just two people, truly remarkable.
We didn't launch till around 11AM. The wind swung around to 330, and while the wind swung the sky went from the beautiful first northerly street to more disorganized. We decided to airport hop and try to do Sugarbush and return. Initially it was slow going, and we even backtracked on the way to Jaffrey to stay within easy range of Fitchburg. After that it got better and better, til for segments we just bounced along under the streets. There was some overdevelopment and rain, and we chickened out after turning Parlin (next to Claremont). Phil Gaisford in "PG" pressed onwards and reached I think Woodstock VT, and DJ got up to Sugarbush.
The run back towards Jaffrey was instant with the stong tailwind. We saw some lenticulars and stopped for a while to try and climb up in the wave, but could only reach 7500 feet (bases were at 7000).
After intense dithering and indecision, we ran back to Sterling, then over to Southbridge to meet Juan in "S". Then it was time to come home, cause we haven't a relief system in the Duo yet... Sterling-Jaffrey-Parlin-Jaffrey-Sterling-Southbridge-ret, for around 190 miles in 5:05 - a pleasant leisurely tour of the area. I took Bill Maxwell for a ride but was only able to stay in the air for :50; sorry for the rather short intro Bill, but hope you enjoyed flying the Duo. And thanks again Gerry for the ride!
Dave Nadler
Like many club members, until the past two or three weeks it hadn't seemed like a very productive soaring year due to weather. Last weekend made up for a lot. I was lucky enough on Saturday to get to the field in time for a ride in the new Blanik, thanks to Dick Ruel's invite and timing. For those of you who haven't had a chance to fly it yet, let me confirm that it indeed is a fine ship. The visibility from the front seat is fantastic thanks to a wonderful canopy -- it's flawless and your vision is crystal clear. The new seats, too, are extremely comfy -- despite the odd blue-gray crazy-quilt pattern design on them! You'll also notice that there is much more room in the front for your legs (the instrument panel doesn't extend down to the bottom of the cockpit like it does in the other ship).
We got off tow, and Dick immediately found us a thermal. We got up over 3,600 when he turned over the controls to me. It was downhill from there for quite a while (I think Dick was beginning to regret giving me the controls). The controls are smooth, if just a tad stiffer than our old Blanik. We finally headed for the quarry, flying through some decent sink before hitting a small gaggle that inlcuded Frank Spital in the club's 1-34. We were down to 1,700 in the first turn...but it turned around from there. Dick sounded pretty happy when the altimeter began to go the other way ... for once. We rode the thermal up to near cloudbase, to 5,400 feet. Dick took the controls, and we worked some weaker lift later, but knew we were getting close to our hour by then. Dick spiraled us down (weee!) and it seemed a shame to say goodbye to the altitude on such a beautiful day. Oh well, the new Blanik had impressed me and we'd had our fun. After a late lunch, I later had a great fun flight in the 1-34, getting back around 5:30 just as everyone was wrapping things up. A good day can make up for a lot of bad weather weekends. --Todd Hyten
Bubba has been north of the border for a few weeks, crewing at the Canadian Nationals. The good news is that team Langlois, consisting of Laurence and her father Pierre-Andre, took the top team trophy, and fifth place in the club class, read as sports class south of the border.
Rather than give you a grunt by groan account of crew duties, let me tell you about one fantastic soaring club. The Gatineau Gliding Club, started in the Gatineau hills north of Ottawa in the early fifties. They moved to Pendleton Ontario, about 40 miles SE of Ottawa, in 1958. Pendleton was an old Canadian Air Force training base. In 1960 they purchased the base from Crown Assets for the sum of $8,000.00. A terribly civilized group these Canadians, can you imagine the U.S. Gumment selling us the air base at Fort Devens for the inflated sum of around $50,000. I don't think so.
Smart fellows these Canadians, figure that if somebody were to hook a wing on one of those runway light things, that they might hurt themselves. So they ripped them out on all three runways, paid off half the mortgage with the copper salvage. Sold off a few of the prefab buildings to pay down the rest. So what they wound up with was a rather large airport, with a hanger about six times the size of Sterlings, the old wing repair shop, about half the size of Sterlings hanger, 400 acres of land, along with a 75 X 30 foot swimming pool. To keep the tax man happy they rent out about 150 acres of land to a local farmer, and just before the snow flies, they trailer all the birds, and fill the hanger chocker block full of motor homes and boats. Brings in a tidy rental fee. A few dozen members also pay a small yearly fee to park camp trailers on the property for the season. Not your average trailer park, lots are about as big as the one I am living on, and I did not see a spot where you could see more than two other sites from yours.
Now Canadians being Canadians, these boys, in their opinion, were missing the most important part of a soaring club, "The Bar". So they built a real big one, surrounded it with a nice club house, and because they did not want really sweated up line personal in their bar, they added his and her showers. This indoor plumbing thing was not to popular with some of the natives so they built a few more showers out back. All they needed now was a kitchen and a large screened in porch to dine in, so damn if they did not build those also. This place is damn near a vacation destination. The only problem I see is if one were to stand around too long after breakfast in the morning, you would soon be sitting on one of the half dozen tractors or riding mowers used to keep the place looking neat and tidy.
These folks are also blessed with some great farmland in all directions, nothing but large flat fields, down to the St. Lawrence river, an hours drive to the south. Fly north for 20 miles, jump the Ottawa river and you have the Laurencians, not the highest of hills, but worth the trip. Contest altitudes were limited to 6500 feet for the duration, but under normal conditions ATC will give you all the altitude you want. They just did not want fifty gliders popping up into Ottawa or Montreal airspace.
We all know that Eden was the only perfect place to live in, so to make up for all this splendor, God said let there be Mosquitoes, Lots and Lots of Mosquitoes, and let them be the size of humming birds. And it was So. Every cloud has a silver lining however, found out that after a few dozen bites per day, I could give up my blood pressure medicine. Hell I was running a quart low after my first hour there, kept me in the bar for most of the day, infusing new liquids. No Canadian would ever let you drink alone, it's just not in their nature, and being too polite to try and stop you, they will always join you. I was tempted to try a beer for breakfast one day, just to see how many I could get to join me, but figured they had a contest to run.
All in all I have never met a more hospitable group, justifiably proud of their playground and willing to share their wealth. Hell they even let their guests from the south, win every class they were entered in, on the Fourth of July. How can you beat that for gracious hosts, of course by that time the leaders could have sat the day out and still won the contest, but it's the thought that counts.
The contest web site www.sac.ca/nationals2000/index.htm GGC will show the club, just to prove that Bubba aint fibbin. Also click on competitors, standard, Ray Galloway to see what I really think of the guy who ropes me into these things.
Bubba
The ASA club goes to Parowan each year for the week of the July 4th holiday for the annual Utah getaway and I was lucky enough to be able to go this time. As Kirk (the other 1/2 owner of S4) used his jeep to trailer the glider up to Utah, I decided to forego 4 wheeled transportation and use the motorcycle. The total trip distance is 470 miles, so I broke up the long trip north by spending a night in Las Vegas and joining up with part of the convoy the next morning.
Sunday began auspiciously with blue skies and no wind. By the time we were ready to launch the wind had picked up (as always) and was blowing down the 6000 foot paved runway from the south, meaning that we would have to push our ships all the way to the other end - something we ended up doing every day this year. Since Parowan airport is at 5930' a normal tow plane wouldn't have much of a chance with a fully ballasted glass ship so they use an AgCat (biplane with a wingspan similar to that of our gliders) with a turbocharged radial engine; it is a frightening sensation to be towed behind such a behemoth. My first tow this year wasn't a good one, I was fully loaded with water and got towed at just above 60 knots. I let the glider get a bit low and was overwhelmed by the wake - I was being pushed off to the right and full left aileron and rudder weren't helping and while I was reaching for the release knob a fortuitous gust got me back in position and let me continue the tow.
I was very happy to get off tow at 2500'agl (8500'msl!) and connecting with a thermal almost immediately. This brought me to 13000' within minutes and I boldly took off upwind [15-20knots] for Cedar City which was 20 miles distant. I only lost 1000 feet and felt on top of the world! This quickly changed when I turned back downwind and took another line to back to Parowan- on the last 6 miles I didn't even know if I could make the runway! The lesson was clear - lots of lift but lots of sink in between. Chastened, I became much more wary of big areas of sink and flew conservatively for the remainder of the flight. Although at the time I didn't realize it, I did contact the wave that was present and got up to 15000' and flew downwind 30 miles to the Delano Peaks (12500') and back. Some of the others detected and utilized the wave and CH got to 24500' and had a final glide home of over 100 miles!
Monday's tow was much better, as I waited a long time before lifting off and stayed very high on tow. The flight was not remarkable and I bounced around for 4 hours on oxygen and got up to 16500'.
Tuesday was too windy to fly (30 knots+) so Kirk and I spent all day using a heavy buffer and cleaned up S4.
Wednesday was another wave day but Kirk had S4, so I planned on biking in the hills until one of the other pilots offered to let me fly his ASW-19 because his wife was subtly threatening divorce if he didn't join her for a day of shopping. I couldn't refuse this kind offer and got to fly. I spent almost 2 hours scratching around between 2000' and 4000' agl while listening to 3 other ships (S4, WA and AJ) talking about the wonderful wave at 17,999 feet and must admit that I used a couple of choice expletives. But I finally connected at 13000' and one of my most memorable flights ever. The air was not only smooth, it was as if I were flying the glider on the ground - no sensation of movement at all! The lift was at about 4knots and the bands were about 5-6 miles long at close to 30 knots. I flew at minimum sink upwind until the lift petered out, flew about 8 or 9 very shallow circles until I reached the back edge of the lift and repeated this. I got to 20000' in the (Parowan Wave Window) and started exploring the wave upwind. I got up 3 cycles and worked the lift up to 22,500' (by now the lift was only about 1knot). During the upwind stretches I had trimmed the ASW-19 and flew hands off, but on the last one I was having incredible trouble keeping on a heading, with the nose pitching up-and-down and left-and-right. This smoothed out when I took my hand off the stick and I looked around for a possible cause, finally realizing that the oxygen had run out! I did debate with myself for a couple of seconds on whether or not I should descend but what little common sense that I had left finally triumphed and I dropped the gear, pulled full spoilers and descended at just below maneuvering speed. During the descent I noticed that my vision had been tunneling the whole time and was happy that I was quickly approaching altitudes at which I could survive. I really think that oxygen system should have some sort of a warning system, especially as the potential for problems, especially during high altitude flights, is so high.
The last flight that I had at Parowan was on the next day and in a mixture of light wave and thermals I stayed within a 30 mile radius of the gliderport until 4pm, when moisture finally moved in and beautiful cloud streets developed. I found myself flying along their 16000' bases at 90 knots without losing any altitude and gloated that all the other pilots had given up and landed before the lift got good (perseverance did pay off). I got a 5 hour flight in and covered around 200 miles (most of those at the end under the cloud streets) before dinner was called on the radio and I spoilered down!
This year's getaway was a very nice one, with mixture of wave and thermal gliding coupled with a lot of post-flight activity (i.e. drinking & eating). I certainly hope that the Franconia trip will be as much fun!
-Arnd.