4/17 - 4/18

[DanTuck]

Standing on launch. Its fantastic!!! Get out here!!!!

[silverwings]

ETA LZ at 12:00. (202)409-1574 c

[mcgowantk]

I am heading out soon too. Most forecasts still look promising but Tony's LOTWS model is a little troubling.

See you out there.

Tom

[XCanytime]

Dan, Ward, and I got to launch just after 9A to a sky full of wave clouds and winds of 12 to 18 MPH in the slot. As we set up it died off to smaller cycles here and there. Then a few mild cycles came through so I launched and turned left. Noticed that it was way north cross on the ridge as I sped SW and sank. Didn't find much and turned back and crawled past launch below the slot. Scratched and clawed in the north facing bowl in bumps to no avail. Had a nice landing and Dan came and picked me up. Thanks Dan! Back at launch it had picked up some while I set up again. Ward gave it a go around 12 noon in a light cycle and slowly climbed up to 1K' over launch. This was his first Woodstock flight in 25 years. I got ready again with Carlos and Dan's assistance but it died off again and I didn't want to extendo twice. So I backed off. The wave cloud parked above the ridge finally broke up and the valley between 81 and the mountain was no longer totally in shadow. It picked up a little again so I launched around 12:45P and turned right this time! Scratched and clawed again between the power line clear cut and the parking lot. Took many passes before I was able to get above the ridge and head NE into a pronounced north cross. Heard Ward announce he was 2K' over and near the reservoir. I saw much more sun and less wave clouds up by Strasburg, so I dolphin flew up to Signal Knob. Up there I got the crap beat out of me as I climbed to 4400' MSL, attempted to go downwind and hit a massive sinkhole, turned around and got drilled down to the deck up by the radio tower. Ward had already jumped and was over by Dickey's Ridge. It took an hour to finally climb my way up to 4700' MSL in pieces of a ratty thermal and head downwind to the goal, Front Royal Airport. Heard Ward say that he was getting low over near Hogback and was going to land soon. I easily was going to make the airport when Ward announced he had landed and he warned me it was real squirrelly on the ground. I would find out soon that he was right. I boated around north of the airport listening to the Unicom frequency on 123.000 MHz and eyeballing the windsocks, which were showing N to NW winds. Thankfully there was no activity going on so I set up a NW approach to the level grass strip by the taxiway. About 200' AGL I went negative in the saddle. As I got down to ground level I noticed my groundspeed picked up considerably for a few seconds. A gust from the rear. Then as it went away quickly my airspeed increased and I climbed a little. I pulled in more to get to ground level,and was getting ready to flare when I got hit by a side gust and slammed into the ground. The Finsterwalder wheels did their job, as did the chest mounted parachute. Carried over to the parking lot and broke down while a couple of pilots offered me rides. Dick Otis, bless his heart, waited for me to get the glider in the bag before giving me a ride back to launch. He is a sailplane instructor, GA pilot, and ex-Navy pilot. Dick checked out the slot and spent some time chatting with Dan Tomlinson and Matthew and Karen as they set up. Mike Cosner was setting up as well. I went and got my glider from Front Royal Airport and met another pilot, Bob Price. We were discussing the day and he had taken his hot rod plane that he keeps at Front Royal over to New Market, where he has a hangar that stores his Beech Bonanza. He said that today the approach into New Market was the most turbulent he has ever had there. I then went and retrieved Ward from his locked gate LZ over in Browntown. The greatest thing on an XC flight is when your driver shows up . Then it was over to dinner at Fox's Pizza with Dan Tuckwiller, Carlos, Ward, Matthew, and Karen.

Bacil

[XCanytime]

Up at Signal Knob waiting for my ride OTB.

Heading OTB from Signal Knob. Buzzard Rock is in the foreground.

The Front Royal Airport is at the upper right, near the river.

Looking SW along the second ridge.

Got the airport made!

[XCanytime]

Staging on the north side of Runway 27.

Bob Price's hot rod plane and my glider parked.

[Matthew]

Fun day at the Stocker. Got there late as the forecast still looked strong most of the day-- we arrived around 3 to avoid flying in the washing machine. Dan Tomlinson arrived on his motorcycle as Karen and I were setting up and we helped launch Randy and Tony. I launched at 4:40 and got kicked around for the first few minutes till climbing to 800 over. After that it was spectacular-- an amazingly clear day!!!! Flew down to Signal Knob, climbing most of the way and maintaining 1800 over. Got down to 1K over at the knob and headed back. On the return trip I caught a good one that took me to 3100 over in front of the ridge. I was wary about wave and winds picking picking up so I stayed in front of the ridge the entire flight. Found lots of sink on the way back and arrived at launch at 700 over to watch Karen launch and then climb right through me without turning-- it gets really annoying after a while!

I buzzed around following the lift lines away from the ridge under clouds for another 40 minutes and left the ridge after 2 hours in the air-- getting down was pretty rowdy till turning onto final-- but landing was easy.

Karen got 1600 over and about 1:15.

Matthew

[silverwings]

Hooked up with Greg Sessa in LZ at 12:00 noticing Ward soaring above the ridge. Bacil and Dan launched while driving up. At launch winds were light around 5 with little stronger cycles to 10. Carlos was set up and Matt Wilkens and Tom arrived little bit later than we did. Got Greg and Matt ready to go and we had to wait for little nicer cycles (around 10 mph) where they both had good launches and worked they way above the ridge. Carlos then went in a lighter cycle but also got up. I had to wait for 15 min for a nice cycle but launched right into a thermal getting up easily. Good lift at times and sink at others reaching 3700 above with cloud base approx 4000+ agl. Had a nice 2:09 flight but got a lot of turbulence coming into land but landed fine. Much stronger winds in the LZ and at launch around 6:00 pm then earlier in the day! Nice to get a couple of hours on my new U2-160.

[MRWilkens]

A special day at Woodstock, full of firsts for me. This was only the second time I flew there, having had my first mountain flight there last June (quick 5 minutes sled), but what a day for me.

Met Tom, John and Greg at launch around 12:45, got set up, watched Greg launch into a nice cycle and followed him about 10 minutes later. I stayed between the two fingers on either side of the LZ getting maybe to about 500'-1000' over for 30-45 minutes. Saw an eagle (immature baldy i think) in front of me at one point and tried to catch up with him...he turned around after about a minute of chasing and came right at me, passed about 30' to my right and give me a quizzical look. After awhile I noticed someone (Tom i think) south of launch and going up fast so I headed that way. A bit of sun had been hitting the valley below that part of the ridge, so I just sat there doing some s-turns, and hitting pockets of lift every minute or so. Decided to try some 360s to see if I could stay in any and it actually started working! After 15-20 minutes or so I noticed I was above everyone else and it seemed like I was still gaining. Fingers getting numb, very numb, and next thing I know I see another cloud past the one right in front of me, little whispies going by made me realize I was at cloud base! I wasn't expecting that and got a bit nervous at that point so I stuffed it for about 5 minutes straight and got back down to around 500' directly over launch. At that point I had a sudden twinge of nausea, wasn't sure what it was at first but realized I was fast getting airsick. I had been up for about 1.5 hours so decided it was time to land. Really bumpy on my approach but on my final leg it chilled out a bit and I had a nice landing. Heard a "whoop" as I touched down and was met by Dan T coming up from the river where he had been passing some time waiting for others to land. Had a huge smile on my face despite the 5 minutes of excruciating pain while my fingers thawed, and another 20 fighting the nausea. Totally worth it though.

So list of first's...
First flight longer then 20 minutes...
First time i got high...I had only been probably 200' over at the Pulpit once before, this time got all the way to cloud base! (4000'agl ? i didn't have any instruments, I would have guessed ~3k)
First time catching thermals
First encounter (albeit brief) with an eagle
First encounter with air-sickness (ugh!) ...any advice on avoiding this? or is it something that just goes away eventually...?

Big thanks to John for observing, and to Tom for his pre-launch advice, thanks guys!

[DanTuck]

Well, my timing couldn't have been worse. Had I launched 15 minutes earlier or an hour later, I think my day would've been very different. As it was, I got on launch right after Bacil and had to wait awhile for a good cycle. I timed them and took a real nice one and got right up to ridge level. The goal was Front Royal airport so I immediately headed North but before I even got to the first finger I was getting drilled and couldn't even cross it. Down, down, down, fast until I was 4-500' below the ridge working a tiny bubble over a little spine coming off the finger. Way down below me over the river I saw an immature bald eagle circling which was cool. Before I knew it he was in my thermal climbing right through me. He dive-bombed me at one point but didn't ever get very close. That thermal got me up 700' over the ridge and I continued North over the first finger. I hit one more light thermal in the 1st bowl that went to 700' over again but that was it. There was a tiny bit of ridge lift and by the time I got to about the 5th finger, I had not run into a single thermal. So back down at ridge level and discouraged I decided to turn back and try to make it back to the main LZ. Fortunately the Northerly tail wind helped me make it as I porpoised over each finger on the return, never more than 100' over the ridge. In fact I wasn't going to make it over the last finger and then found the best thermal of my flight right in the corner which took me up to 1000' over before dissipating. At that point, I turned back North to give it another try. But as soon as I turned North I got drilled again (like never before) and quickly gave up on that idea. Within a very few seconds, I was back down below the ridge. I have never dropped out of the sky like yesterday. Unreal sink. I leveled off about a hundred below the ridge and cruised towards launch hoping for anything. Before I even got there, I got slammed again and had to dive out of the hole straight out from the mountain. I didn't recover from that scraping and I went out to land. Landing was uneventful in the calm primary.

I was really frustrated when I landed but after discussing it with a few of you guys, I think I have a grasp on what happened. As Bacil said there was wave all over the sky. While we were setting up a wave cloud was parked on top of us which had the mountain and the front of the valley in shadow. The wind was pretty strong but there was no heating going on. After we were set up and ready to go, the cloud above us broke apart, or more likely moved East. At the same time the wave cloud above the mountain across the valley also dissipated some and began to slowly move across the valley towards us. After a little while of sunshine some thermals started popping off and the conditions seemed to be more friendly. So Ward and Bacil launched and headed North to avoid the shadow that was headed our way across the valley. By the time I found a cycle to launch in the wave cloud had moved in closer to our ridge. Now that the cloud had moved closer, we were basically right under the lee side of the wave. So all that air was dumping from the wave and supressing the thermals and occasionally reaching down to a very low AGL. This would explain why the thermals seemed to just disappear around me. I also think that the sink I was experiencing was not thermal related but lee side wave downwash related. I wish my vario had a max down record. It was intense. After I landed a few people launched and reported very difficult conditions for the first 15 mintues. After that (when the wave cloud got back in phase with the mountain) they had very nice flights getting stinking high in relatively nice air. What a difference an hour can make.

Matt, congrats on a great flight!! But I gotta say, be careful, it sounds like you got in the wave. Hope to see you out there again soon!

[Matthew]

Hi Dan,

Whenever I'm disappointedwith a flight, I remember that day at Jack's when I was a hang 2-- several pilots launched and went straight up. Another pilot launched and was just drilled to the gound in massive sink. Fifteen minutes later everyone started to launch again and everyone went up, Up UP!!!

The pilot drilled to the ground-- Dennis Pagen.


Also, wave suppressing the lift and decreasing wind speed at launch also leads to the more dangerous scenario of the 'sucker lull'. If it's blowing hard and then settles down early to mid-day at Woodstock on a strong forecast-- don't immediatlely jump into it. It can very easily return to being ballistic, strong and gusty--I've seen it too may times leading to lots of broken aluminium in the LZ. If you do get a lull on a strong day, tune your radio to the weather freq. and check the conditon reports-- if things have lightened up upwind, that's a good sign. If not, fly at your own peril. This is especially true for pilots flying Falcons.... and paragliders.


Matthew

[Ward Odenwald]

Yes, it was a good day soaring above the mighty Massanutten. Bacil, Dan and I decided that we would fly to the north end of the ridge, hang-out there and wait for our dream OTB thermal(s). After taking off around noon, I realized that the NNW cross was bouncing off the fingers making for choppy-sporadic ridge lift. Below 3,500 msl many of the thermals that I encountered out in front of the ridge, on the way up to the north end, were small and rowdy but once I climbed above 3,500 ft most thermals had multiple cores that allowed me to stay above 4 K for most of the second half of my 2hr 19min flight. Just about all of the significant lift that I was lucky enough to fly into came from thermals that most likely originated from the leeside of ridges that I passed over. I made it to cloud base 2 or 3 times (~5,800 msl), with most of the high climbs occurring east of Signal Knob and while flying toward and along Sky Line Drive. For me, yesterday was special. I got to spend time parked above the old launch (~1/2 mile north of the current launch) trying to remember my last flight from Woodstock back in 85. Going over the back at Signal Knob and flying past Dickey’s ridge yesterday was great too! After passing the Dickey’s ridge LZ, I couldn’t find any thermals strong enough to allow for a safe passage over the mountains so I landed in a pasture next to Hogback Mt. in turbulent conditions. While on final (at tree top level), I flew into some major trash triggered most likely by a thermal that was lifting off my primary LZ. With my vario screaming UP, I managed to maintain enough control to fly to the adjacent “Plan B” field. By the time I was in ground effect, the wind direction had switched nearly 180 degrees. Fortunately, my wheels gave me a smooth bouncing touch down. Wheels may increase your drag in the air, but it's a “Major Drag” if you don’t have them when landing in turbulent conditions. After landing, I radioed Bacil, reaching him just before he landed at Front Royal airport, and 3hrs later we were back at launch. Thanks for the retrieval Bacil! What follows are some photos of the flight, starting with the trip north to Signal Knob and the rest were taken after I left the Massanutten ridge.

[Ward Odenwald]

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[mikecosner]

Showed up around 3:30 to a cold and gusty 15-20 in the slot and three pilots soaring. Got set up and heard Bacil got thrashed around so waited. winds backed off a touch just after 5pm, so gave it a go. Got up 700 feet over the ridge quickly and hooked into a boomer to 3k over but back down quickly in some big patches of sink. Never got that high again. Remainder of flight between 500 and 2k over launch. Generally most of the thermals were mild and mellow, but hit some 900ft up after 6pm. approach was a bit bumpy and lifty until final approach.

about 10 minutes after landing and breaking down with matthew and karen, a 10mph SE gust (catabolic flow) rolled through the field and i was glad i was not landing then.

Great to hear that I gave Matthew his first lesson a few years ago back at kitty hawk.

thank you to the guys who helped wire crew.

mike cosner

[DanTuck]

lol, Matthew, thanks. Lesson learned.
Glad you had a good flight Mike, and it was me who had you as a KHK instructor for a day. Thanks again!
Ward, awesome pictures!!!!!

[Matthew]

Hi Mike,

I think you gave Dan Tuck. his first lesson, not me--- some blond dude gave me my first lesson back at KHK in the mid-90s.

Matthew