BT
July 6th 07, 06:07 AM
"BT" > wrote in message news:...
> 300nm round trip today.. not by me.. I was in the office.. but a club
> member..
> we'll be looking for the posting on OLC..
>
> Jean NV, Tonopah NV and Return..
>
>
> "Michael Ash" > wrote in message
> ...
>> Since we seem to have started some sort of tradition of telling glider
>> stories, here's mine from today.
>>
>> I wasn't sure if I was going to fly today. Tomorrow is my scheduled day
>> of
>> duty at the airfield (one of the small disadvantages of belonging to a
>> glider club rather than using a commercial operation), and with a
>> 90-minute drive each way I don't like to go out to the airport twice in
>> the same weekend. But it looked like I might not get another chance for a
>> cross-country flight for a while, so when the weather looked fine and the
>> thermal predictions were saying yes, I decided to go for it.
>>
>> I arrived late morning, put the glider together, ate my lunch, and
>> launched a little after noon. I asked for a 3,000 foot tow but popped off
>> early, around 2,500 when we hit a thermal. The thermal was weak and very
>> tough to center, a pattern which would repeat itself throughout the
>> flight. However I managed to work my way up to around 3,000ft AGL over
>> the
>> city a couple of miles East of the airport. I decided to head North in
>> search of better lift.
>>
>> After maxing out at 3,000, I hopped from cloud to cloud and slowly lost
>> ground as the subsequent thermals just weren't working out well. It
>> turned
>> out that only about a third of the clouds had any lift under them, and
>> the
>> ones that did weren't very good. My mental landout preparation made a
>> slow
>> but steady progression from "look at all the places to land, and I'm
>> still
>> in range of the airport too!" to "that area looks promising" to "I think
>> I'll take a closer look at that field" and finally to "I will land in
>> *that* field right now if this thermal quits on me".
>>
>> I spent a surprising amount of time in and near that last state, hopping
>> from one cloud to another while simulltaneously hopping from one field to
>> another. After doing this two or three times it finally came down to the
>> real thing. My thermal really *did* quit on me, and nothing else could be
>> found. My chosen field at this point was an enormous flat thing right
>> next
>> to the river, with a little loop of gravel driveway slicing it in two
>> about two thirds of the way down. Some power lines crossed the field
>> parallel to the driveway in the small section, so I decided to land in
>> the
>> big part with my final pointed toward the driveway. The plan was to come
>> in relatively shallow and skip most of the field so I could come to a
>> stop
>> conveniently close to the driveway, and this would also give me a lot of
>> time and options in case I noticed something amiss before touching down.
>>
>> But nothing was amiss and I made a beautifully smooth landing right where
>> I wanted to. (Why is it that nobody is ever around to see those?!)
>>
>> Safely on the ground, my next step was to find somebody and find out
>> where
>> I was. My first lead was a pair of shoes and some clothing in the grass
>> near the river, but unfortunately I couldn't track down its owner. So I
>> started following the driveway up the other way and finally found some
>> sort of civilization.
>>
>> Turns out the field is part of a water treatment plant (I have no idea
>> why
>> a water treatment plant needs an airport-sized grass field on a
>> riverbank,
>> but there it is) and the driveway was gated and locked. Many Adventures
>> in
>> Government followed trying to find someone who could open it, but finally
>> a worker was found and the glider was retrieved successfully.
>>
>> All this fun and I only made it 4.7 (statute) miles from the airport!
>>
>> (Footnote for curious power pilots: see how much fun you can have in a
>> glider? But I would like to point out that the weather alone did not
>> force
>> this landout, nor does it force most. A cautious glider pilot may always
>> remain within gliding distance of his home airport and never require the
>> services of unknown fields. So you don't have to worry that flying a
>> glider necessarily means ending up in fields. Should one so desire, the
>> risk of ending up in fields can be reduced to about the same as the risk
>> to a power pilot of doing so, you just don't go that far most of the
>> time.)
>>
>> --
>> Michael Ash
>> Rogue Amoeba Software
>
>
> 300nm round trip today.. not by me.. I was in the office.. but a club
> member..
> we'll be looking for the posting on OLC..
>
> Jean NV, Tonopah NV and Return..
>
>
> "Michael Ash" > wrote in message
> ...
>> Since we seem to have started some sort of tradition of telling glider
>> stories, here's mine from today.
>>
>> I wasn't sure if I was going to fly today. Tomorrow is my scheduled day
>> of
>> duty at the airfield (one of the small disadvantages of belonging to a
>> glider club rather than using a commercial operation), and with a
>> 90-minute drive each way I don't like to go out to the airport twice in
>> the same weekend. But it looked like I might not get another chance for a
>> cross-country flight for a while, so when the weather looked fine and the
>> thermal predictions were saying yes, I decided to go for it.
>>
>> I arrived late morning, put the glider together, ate my lunch, and
>> launched a little after noon. I asked for a 3,000 foot tow but popped off
>> early, around 2,500 when we hit a thermal. The thermal was weak and very
>> tough to center, a pattern which would repeat itself throughout the
>> flight. However I managed to work my way up to around 3,000ft AGL over
>> the
>> city a couple of miles East of the airport. I decided to head North in
>> search of better lift.
>>
>> After maxing out at 3,000, I hopped from cloud to cloud and slowly lost
>> ground as the subsequent thermals just weren't working out well. It
>> turned
>> out that only about a third of the clouds had any lift under them, and
>> the
>> ones that did weren't very good. My mental landout preparation made a
>> slow
>> but steady progression from "look at all the places to land, and I'm
>> still
>> in range of the airport too!" to "that area looks promising" to "I think
>> I'll take a closer look at that field" and finally to "I will land in
>> *that* field right now if this thermal quits on me".
>>
>> I spent a surprising amount of time in and near that last state, hopping
>> from one cloud to another while simulltaneously hopping from one field to
>> another. After doing this two or three times it finally came down to the
>> real thing. My thermal really *did* quit on me, and nothing else could be
>> found. My chosen field at this point was an enormous flat thing right
>> next
>> to the river, with a little loop of gravel driveway slicing it in two
>> about two thirds of the way down. Some power lines crossed the field
>> parallel to the driveway in the small section, so I decided to land in
>> the
>> big part with my final pointed toward the driveway. The plan was to come
>> in relatively shallow and skip most of the field so I could come to a
>> stop
>> conveniently close to the driveway, and this would also give me a lot of
>> time and options in case I noticed something amiss before touching down.
>>
>> But nothing was amiss and I made a beautifully smooth landing right where
>> I wanted to. (Why is it that nobody is ever around to see those?!)
>>
>> Safely on the ground, my next step was to find somebody and find out
>> where
>> I was. My first lead was a pair of shoes and some clothing in the grass
>> near the river, but unfortunately I couldn't track down its owner. So I
>> started following the driveway up the other way and finally found some
>> sort of civilization.
>>
>> Turns out the field is part of a water treatment plant (I have no idea
>> why
>> a water treatment plant needs an airport-sized grass field on a
>> riverbank,
>> but there it is) and the driveway was gated and locked. Many Adventures
>> in
>> Government followed trying to find someone who could open it, but finally
>> a worker was found and the glider was retrieved successfully.
>>
>> All this fun and I only made it 4.7 (statute) miles from the airport!
>>
>> (Footnote for curious power pilots: see how much fun you can have in a
>> glider? But I would like to point out that the weather alone did not
>> force
>> this landout, nor does it force most. A cautious glider pilot may always
>> remain within gliding distance of his home airport and never require the
>> services of unknown fields. So you don't have to worry that flying a
>> glider necessarily means ending up in fields. Should one so desire, the
>> risk of ending up in fields can be reduced to about the same as the risk
>> to a power pilot of doing so, you just don't go that far most of the
>> time.)
>>
>> --
>> Michael Ash
>> Rogue Amoeba Software
>
>