I thought some of you might be interested in a more complete post on my 127 mile flight to Florida Ridge on Friday with 70 of my closest friends so here goes.
Thursday night the soaring forecast looked spectacular and with the strong north winds I was almost certain the task committee would call for a downwind to Florida Ridge and I was not dissapointed. I staged fairly well, got a decent launch time and when one of my favorite tug pilots, Lisa Kane, pulled up to tow me, I knew it was going to be a good day. Lisa waved me off and pointed left towards the thermal that I already new was there. Within seconds I was climbing up the side of a huge gaggle at over 800 fpm reaching cloudbase at around 5,000' in just a couple of minutes. Now the trick was to stay near the top of this swarm of pilots while we drifted downwind towards the edge of the start circle and start time. This can be difficult but this time I got it pretty good with only a few pilots above me and about 50 of us took the first start time and charged south as our flight computers told us it was time to go.
My goal for the day was to fly fast but not to push so hard that I would land out. Placing in the top few would certainly be fun but I really needed to make goal. As we cruised south over Wallaby Ranch we saw the huge number of gliders set up for the Wills Wing demo days and wondered why they weren't in the air. Later we found out they had had some very strange and windy conditions that had damaged several gliders on the ground and Malcom had grounded everyone. As we continued south we began to spread out with the super stars leaving us behind and us average pilots outdistancing the slow pokes. Cloud base continued to get higher (up to over 7,300') and my fingers got numb from the cold as we pressed for more speed on the glides. With a combination of lots of Q's and lots of turning pilots marking lift I guess I should have gone even faster but we were still seeing ground speeds well in excess of 50 mph for most of the trip. Climbs were so good that when I was "only" climbing at 300 to 400 fpm it seemed incredibly slow and I would get impatient to leave this crap so I could find a "good" climb. The miles ticked off fairly quickly but I was still feeling fatigue from the cold and the need to pull in for speed on every glide. It was also our 4th straight day of flying and I had flown over 85 miles the day before so I was anxious to get to goal. I'm not really certain what my lowest point on course was. I'll check that out when I download my flight log later but I was never really concerned about landing out.
When I was about 30 miles from goal and approaching the 100 mile mark I slid under another nice cloud street like others I had flown under along the course only this one was even better. Pretty certain it was a sea breeze convergence line and it was working great. I was thinking that I might only need one more really good climb to make goal. That was true but it was so good that I never really stopped to turn. When I would hit especially strong areas of lift under this great cloud line I would simply push way out and sort of "warfle" back and forth doing little "s" turns as my vario would go into "dog whistle" mode. The rest of the time I was flying in zero sink or at least standard 200 fpm down stuff. Soon my 5030 was telling me I had goal on glide and I started to increase my air speed to 60 plus mph as I began to see the Florida Ridge flight park in the distance. I raced a few other pilots across the line coming in at about 750' and was slightly dissapointed to see so many gliders already on the ground. Turns out that I was about 30th of 70 pilots to make goal. pointing out just how spectacular the conditions were that day.
Bo Hagewood, who was not competing but who flew down in his Combat just for fun, said it was perhaps the best day he had ever seen in Florida and was mad at himself for not flying with a GPS. He felt he could have flown all the way to the tip of Florida and the Keys but he needed the GPS to try to navigate around Miami air space. Not sure about that, he would have had to fly over the Everglades and Aligator Ally to do that but heck, Bo never let a little swamp or a few reptiles get in his way so who knows?
It continued to rain gliders for what seemed like hours but we were still missing Charlie Allen from our truck and had no knowledge of where he was due to him flying with out a radio. Finally, we spotted his glider cruising in at about 5,000 feet. He later said that the lift, even at 6:00, was so strong he couldn't get down. He was especially slow because he had harness problems and had flown the entire task with his zipper open and his shoulder line pulling him into a very upright position. He said it was sort of like flying with a drogue chute deployed!
The only bad part of this story is that Lauren had still not felt up to flying this day and missed her opportunity to fly with us and share the Womens distance record that Linda Slamone now holds. Hopefully we'll get another chance this year but I doubt it will be as good as this one.
Next stop is Kiity Hawk and then we'll be looking forward to seeing all our old friends at Ridgely in June.
Paul
70 pilots to goal!!!
Moderator: CHGPA BOD
Wow, what a day! Look forward to seeing you guys.
Warning: powered flight material ahead:
Spent the weekend triking: packed it up, trailered to Green Landings, an airstrip homes development north of Martinsburg, set it up, flew along the Potomac to Hancock, visited the I-68 roadcut through Sideling Hill, Berkeley Springs, Fort Frederick, the C&O canal and Western Maryland Railtrail.
Super friendly folks at Green Landings offered a vacant hangar for the night. They build and fly Sky Rangers and such.
Today we took a two hour flight up to McConnellsburg then west over the abandoned portion of the Pennsylvania Turnpike to Bill's Hill and Breezewood. Took data in the smooth air on climb and descent rates at different speeds (Steve, my partner, is interested in such things).
Back at Front Royal, saw Tom Ceunen who had been flying PG at Dickey's. He had his whole extended family in tow.
Kept the trike on the trailer and brought it home with a view to attending the Massey fly-in/chili cook-off next weekend. Do you still have George and Cindi's number?
Super blue sky weekend with warm temperatures.
- Hugh
Warning: powered flight material ahead:
Spent the weekend triking: packed it up, trailered to Green Landings, an airstrip homes development north of Martinsburg, set it up, flew along the Potomac to Hancock, visited the I-68 roadcut through Sideling Hill, Berkeley Springs, Fort Frederick, the C&O canal and Western Maryland Railtrail.
Super friendly folks at Green Landings offered a vacant hangar for the night. They build and fly Sky Rangers and such.
Today we took a two hour flight up to McConnellsburg then west over the abandoned portion of the Pennsylvania Turnpike to Bill's Hill and Breezewood. Took data in the smooth air on climb and descent rates at different speeds (Steve, my partner, is interested in such things).
Back at Front Royal, saw Tom Ceunen who had been flying PG at Dickey's. He had his whole extended family in tow.
Kept the trike on the trailer and brought it home with a view to attending the Massey fly-in/chili cook-off next weekend. Do you still have George and Cindi's number?
Super blue sky weekend with warm temperatures.
- Hugh