I wish I had the time to do a more detailed write up of my flight, but maybe this will be enough for most of you! As you may guess from this "short" write up, I am still pretty psyched about the flight. Bruce, Hank, and I met up to try to fly to Manquin. Actually, Bruce and Hank wanted to go to Manquin. I thought it was too tough. I did, however, erase all waypoints from my gps, except Woodstock, Gordonville, and Manquin. I called a driver, Laurie, that had responded to my craigslist ad, and we were off.
I was last of the three to launch, launching at noon. We stayed together pretty well until we went over the back to fly downwind to Manquin. The ridge was working very consistently, and I essentially flew north without turning to just past the reservoir and headed back to Edinburgh Gap. I didn’t work a thermal until I was close enough to jump that gap and crossed without much difficulty, starting from 4,500 msl and making it still 1,000 above Short. Hank and Bruce were right behind. Things were going well, and we didn’t waste much time along Short or at Mt. Jackson, jumping back to Kern Mt. after circling for a few minutes.
The first time we stopped to get high was at New Market Gap, where we broke 8 k msl for the first time; however, we decided to head down the ridge 5-10 more miles before diving over the back. (In hindsight, we may have went too far south. It seemed to me, we had to fly slightly cross wind to the north to stay on track to Manquin.) We all got high again a few miles later, but Bruce headed south down the ridge getting lower all the time, so Hank and I drifted over the back, and went toward Elkton, the planned spot on Skyline Drive where we intended to cross. I got the base again on the way east to SNP over the middle of the valley, but still didn’t feel I had enough altitude to cross SNP when I arrived. As Bruce struggled at Elkton (and eventually landed there), Hank and I drifted a little downwind and decided to go for it. I crossed at 6,500 msl but wished I had much more.
The east side of SNP was trashy, and there were no clouds that looked inviting to me. I drifted in zero sink for a while at 3,500 msl for 5 miles or so until we hit a boomer that took us across Rt. 29 and topped us out at over 8,500 msl. The run to Manquin was on after all. The next glide was to the NW point of Lake Anna. We both struggled there for a while as the clouds dried up. Hank tried the field I liked, but reported no lift, so I jogged south to a small wispy. Hank ended up landing along the south side of the Lake, but my jog south put me into 200+ that saved my bacon (I was down to 2,500 msl at that point).
From there, there were always some clouds that seemed to be near inviting potential LZs, so I managed to stay relatively high for the next 10-15 miles. Then about 25 miles out, I hit a boomer to 8,990 msl and used that to cross I-95 just north of the Hanover Municipal Airport. At that point, things seemed to go magic and I hardly lost any altitude gliding the 15 miles to Manquin. Hank called Steve Wendt, who met me out on the runway as I came in. He was a most gracious host, feeding me apples, diet cokes and potato chips until our driver, with Bruce and Hank arrived.
The stats: 5:50 flight time. 8,990 msl max altitude, 106 miles straight line distance from the reservoir (but I am not sure how the flight will be scored because I did about 38 miles on the ridge before going downwind). What a great flight, and thanks to everyone who helped: Laurie the driver, Bruce for motivating us to try something I thought was outside our ability, and Hank for finding those good thermals when we were on the flat lands, east of SNP.
Tom McGowan
Woodstock to Manquin : 143 miles : Tom M April 29 2007
Moderators: lplehmann, CHGPA BOD
Pete sent me an image that shows some of the details of Tom's flight.
Click on the small version (below), and that will take you to our photo gallery.
Once there, click on the image again and you'll get the full-size version.
<a href="http://galleries.chgpa.org/displayimage.php?pos=-72">
<img src="http://galleries.chgpa.org/albums/userp ... n.jpg"></a>
Thanks to Tom and Pete for providing the tracklog and image.
MarkC
Click on the small version (below), and that will take you to our photo gallery.
Once there, click on the image again and you'll get the full-size version.
<a href="http://galleries.chgpa.org/displayimage.php?pos=-72">
<img src="http://galleries.chgpa.org/albums/userp ... n.jpg"></a>
Thanks to Tom and Pete for providing the tracklog and image.
MarkC