I brought the ship out of it's hangar on Tuesday for a final season attempt at the 500Km as the conditions looked pretty good for a flight along the valley. Unfortunately I made it all the way to Brenda Junction (where a road just a bit above a dirt track crosses the highway to Los Angeles and is in the middle of nowhere) before the lift started dying. Here I was, about 100nm from home; no crew to pick me up and nothing landable in sight. Goodbye diamond dreams - I managed to limp back through a 30 mile long unlandable stretch [by far the best emergency landout place was a trailer park, filled with trailers] before some better thermals got me back into cruise mode. Back at Turf I joined Ted Grussing in his 304CZ and we flew on a bit in dissipating lift before landing back Turf; the day was exactly 400Km long and a flight of over 5 hours. On Thursday I played hooky from work again in the hopes of doing the same task; this time I wasn't alone and wanted to fly with Tony Smolder in his Ventus. He went on ahead and landed out at a strip after only 40km and I returned to the airfield, disappointed. Tony subsequently took an aero-retrieve and experimented with lift in the hills to the north - going on oxygen and flying around in great conditions and real _clouds_! On Saturday the weather looked even better to the north, but I neglected to change the task in the logger and really wished to complete the diamond flight. So I headed off west again while the rest went north. An hour later I was scrounging around at under 1000' agl 50 miles from home while the rest were approaching the Grand Canyon caverns at FL180. I was sweating and my temp gauge read over 100 while I heard chatter from KC stating that he was freezing and was going to descend a bit. I was not a happy camper and my flight computer read between 100 and 400 feet below final glide all the way back home.
Bad decisions and no FAI 500Km flight this year...
-Arnd.