Blast From The Past

[lbunner]

I think of you all frequently and was scouring my hard drive looking for ways to lower my usage and ran across this write up of a flight from the Pulpit over a decade ago. Can it really be that long?

One out of every five weeks I have to be on call for work which means I must be within 50 minutes of the plant. I was duty this week so didn’t think much about flying. However on Thursday, the blipmaps looked really good for a Pulpit XC day on Saturday. I spent Friday finding someone who would trade the on call duty and lucked out. I got a ‘really good’ friend to cover for me. Friday night I discussed the possibility of flying on Saturday with Sue only to find that we had a dinner commitment at 6:30 that evening. Drat! The only way I was going to make it back in time was to get a driver and fly XC east toward home. I told her that if she would drive for me, I would fly home to make it easy for her. Fortunately I talked her into it and on Saturday morning we headed to the Pulpit with Mocha (my lab). I like getting to the site early to observe the conditions so we left around 9:00 driving up Rte 83 north to Harrisburg and then west on 76 to Rte 75 to Fort Loudon and then up the backside to the Pulpit (about 1 ½ hours). We arrived about 1030 to find straight in winds at 10-15 mph and nice looking cu’s out over the valley. I was setting up when a few PG pilots showed up so it looked like I would have a launch crew. Bacil showed up at 11:30 and I ended up launching into excellent looking conditions at 12:00. I thermaled up to 3000’ msl right away and thought this was going to be easy. It was another ½ hour before I caught another one in spite of the epic looking clouds. I rode this one up to 4000’ but couldn’t quite stay with it. Before long I was back down below ridge height searching hard for a good core. The clouds looked really good just north of launch but seemed out of reach past the power lines as the slightly crossing NW winds would be really cross at the bend in the mountain. After groveling at ridge height for almost an hour and a half though, I figured these consistently forming clouds were my only ticket. At 2800’ I flew over the power lines to the NW bubbling along not losing any altitude headed for a nicely building cu. About a ½ mile out I finally hit a nice thermal that averaged 400 fpm to cloudbase at 6000’. A series of clouds had formed a long street over the back and I dolphin flew out past the fish hatchery with the bar often at my knees trying to stay in contact with the ground.
Last week’s flight taught me a good lesson on what I needed to do to get on a track that would take me to East Prospect. This thermal had put me on a line to High Rock, I needed to dive to the NE in order to get in a good line to the east. There were several good looking clouds over the top of Front Mountain which is the last mountain before the ground opens up toward Chambersburg. I flew NE right over the top of the southern tip into some rough air. Just east of the mountain I hit good lift at 500 fpm to 5800’ and flew NE to another cloud topping out in strong lift again to cloudbase at 6100’.
It was time to head across the valley to the Michaux State Forest. Bacil and I had discussed how this area could be tough to get across as it is 10 miles wide (at its narrowest part) with very few landing areas. Obviously the best way would be to climb really high out over the forest and then just dive to the other side (sounded easy enough). I was down to 3100’ at the airport north of Chambersburg in search mode under a nice cu but couldn’t find anything consistent. Back to the west there was a building cu so I reversed direction and headed into a solid thermal that took me back to cloudbase. A series of clouds were now lined up over Rte 30 that headed east over the forest. I connected with all three of them and left the forest after topping out in the last one at 6300’. I was now 10 miles north of Gettysburg and in great position. The clouds were lined up heading east and the winds aloft were under 10 mph out of the WNW. Yahoo!
I radioed Sue for the umpteenth time to relay my position not knowing if she heard me as my headset was malfunctioning again (chronic problem). Over Rte 15 I hit the biggest thermal of the day at 750 fpm on average with several circles in 1000+ fpm. Visions of flying beyond East Prospect entered my head as Pete Lehmann’s record (88 miles?) was beckoning. Of course 20 minutes later I was at my lowest point after leaving the mountain at 2700’ north of the York Airport. The clouds still looked great but I was having trouble finding the cores and was just bubbling along from cloud to cloud. My decision making really diminishes when I get fatigued, it was now 4:00 and I was feeling it. For some dumb reason I tend to not top out in the thermals when I’m tired. I tend to have visions of stronger lift downwind and leave before I should. Anyway I did manage to top out at 5500’ on the west side of York and now had the numbers to glide home. A good cloud street was leading the way. I went on final glide working little bubbles but not really concentrating on getting back up as my goal was made. I flew around the development yelling at some of the neighbors from 1500’ and then headed north of town to a nice big freshly cut hay field and touched down at 4:32. Yeehaw! Sue showed up 20 minutes later. She never heard me the entire flight but kept heading east as she figured I must still be in the air. What a driver! Flight statistics: 78.5 miles, just over 6500’ msl, and 4 hours 32 minutes, dinner was great and all is good on the home front! What an excellent day to not have to be on call!

Miss flying with all of you! Cheers!

Bun

[mcgowantk]

Hi Larry

Good to hear from you. What a great flight you had from the Pulpit. We are just getting some fall weather now and I hope to repeat that flight in the coming weeks.

Take care and hope to see you soon.

Tom