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Landing out on a corporate mega-farm or other non-traditional ornon-optimal place?



 
 
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  #1  
Old May 5th 13, 02:59 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
son_of_flubber
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Default Landing out on a corporate mega-farm or other non-traditional ornon-optimal place?

All of the land out stories that I've heard are about landing out on small family farms and the advice is always along the lines of, be friendly, let the farmer's kids sit in the glider etc...

Any stories about landing out in places other than on a small farm? Dealing with corporate security, corporate legal departments, bills for grossly inflated damages, pesticides, etc..

My favorite landout story involves a wetland, and quick while the EPA is not looking, a Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer. It is not my story, so I will not try to retell it, but maybe you get the picture of what I am looking for.
  #2  
Old May 5th 13, 04:07 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Tony[_5_]
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Default Landing out on a corporate mega-farm or other non-traditional ornon-optimal place?

On Sunday, May 5, 2013 8:59:33 AM UTC-5, son_of_flubber wrote:
All of the land out stories that I've heard are about landing out on small family farms and the advice is always along the lines of, be friendly, let the farmer's kids sit in the glider etc...



Any stories about landing out in places other than on a small farm? Dealing with corporate security, corporate legal departments, bills for grossly inflated damages, pesticides, etc..



My favorite landout story involves a wetland, and quick while the EPA is not looking, a Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer. It is not my story, so I will not try to retell it, but maybe you get the picture of what I am looking for.


nope. although i suppose that if i did (or had) landed out on a corporate mega farm, i probably wouldn't have known it since by definition there would be no one around and I would revert to my standard policy of "leave no trace" landing out where i figure that the only evidence that I was there should be that the next time they plant crops in the field the guy driving the tractor will have a moment of confusion as he drives over some strange tire tracks and footprints in the dirt.
  #3  
Old May 6th 13, 12:08 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Papa3[_2_]
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Default Landing out on a corporate mega-farm or other non-traditional ornon-optimal place?

On Sunday, May 5, 2013 9:59:33 AM UTC-4, son_of_flubber wrote:
All of the land out stories that I've heard are about landing out on small family farms and the advice is always along the lines of, be friendly, let the farmer's kids sit in the glider etc...



Any stories about landing out in places other than on a small farm? Dealing with corporate security, corporate legal departments, bills for grossly inflated damages, pesticides, etc..



My favorite landout story involves a wetland, and quick while the EPA is not looking, a Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer. It is not my story, so I will not try to retell it, but maybe you get the picture of what I am looking for.


Following is from a member of my club. I deleted a couple of names to protect ... well... just because. Some of you will immediately know who this is. Even if you don't, it's a good story:

Yo: 1987 Sports Class Nationals at Elmira, typical Elmira weather, HHH. The nice folks in Elmira feel soaring is a family affair and hold their contests when the little *******s are out of school, July-August. The contest was all but washed out, they were sending us up in barely VFR conditions. I forget what the task was but I found myself never over 2,000 agl as I went from field to field, over Watkins-Glen, up the east side of Seneca Lake the whole time at pattern altitude. One of the turnpoints was Seneca Depot; I later found out it was the largest A-bomb storage facility in the country. I would have thought such a place would be in Utah or Nevada. The sectional showed a long runway and a unicom frequency, nothing special, not a restricted area or anything like that. What really made my mind up was the unicom, surely a secret place wouldn't have a unicom frequency. I arrived over the place at 1,000 and looked it over. It had a vast street pattern and looked like any town USA; only at the head of each driveway, where one would expect to see a house and garage, was a mound of dirt. Lots and lots of mounds of dirt.

I called them on unicom and said I was landing. They said: "you can't land here." I thought: screw them, I'm I glider and we'll talk about it on the ground. The two E-7s were really nice guys and asked how I came to land there. I told them I was a Polish U-2 pilot and wanted political asylum. They said that although they thought that was funny they had to push the alarm button and a bunch of kids with guns were coming and it would not be in my best interest to say anything like that to them. The kids showed up in a truck, they had lots of guns including a heavy barrel .50 cal. on a ring mount and operated by a kid who was mostly pimples.

Seneca New York was the birthplace of the women's lib movement, the sufferage movement started there. Seneca Depot was plagued by the Mothers for Peace and the kids with guns thought I was affiliated with the "mothers." The dears had bought a farm across from the main gate and would protest the A-bombs on a regular basis. When not protesting they would burn their bras, write poetry, grow organic food and generally do the **** liberated ladies delight in doing. I had pretty much convinced the kids with guns that I wasn't, in any way, associated with the Mothers when the two state cops showed up.. The cops announced that I was their perpetrator and they would take me into custody. The sergeant in charge of the kids with guns said I was his perpetrator and they couldn't have me. An argument ensued. The argument was stopped by the sound of the rollers on the ring mount .50. It had been pointed at me and looked like the mouth of a railroad tunnel, it now pointed at the cops. The cops quickly left.

[My new wife] had recruited [two SSA members] to help with the retrieve. [Member 1] was head of the Langley Research facility and his G rating outranked the Colonel that commanded the depot and thank Christ for that or we'd be there yet. My retrieve crew had been told that there was going to be a "mission" on in an hour and if we weren't out of there by then we'd be put in a windowless room until the mission was over. [My new wife] told me to sit in the car and keep my f***ing mouth shut (and yeah, she was gonna be a nun). You would pay cash money to see three Germans take a German glider apart - took something like ten minutes.






  #4  
Old May 6th 13, 03:16 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Frank Whiteley
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Default Landing out on a corporate mega-farm or other non-traditional ornon-optimal place?

On Sunday, May 5, 2013 7:59:33 AM UTC-6, son_of_flubber wrote:
All of the land out stories that I've heard are about landing out on small family farms and the advice is always along the lines of, be friendly, let the farmer's kids sit in the glider etc...



Any stories about landing out in places other than on a small farm? Dealing with corporate security, corporate legal departments, bills for grossly inflated damages, pesticides, etc..



My favorite landout story involves a wetland, and quick while the EPA is not looking, a Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer. It is not my story, so I will not try to retell it, but maybe you get the picture of what I am looking for.


One of our club members (then a physics Phd candidate) landed the club 1-34 on an active USAF base a few years ago. After being surrounded by 'assault weapon' toting MP's, he was released to our custody. We still have photographic evidence on our wall.

A former syndicate member of mine in the UK (actually a QC at the Old Bailey) landed at a USAF occupied RAF base. After being surrounded by 'assault weapon' toting MP's, he spent the rest of the afternoon drinking whiskey with the base commander in the O club, until his retrieve crew arrived. They didn't get past the door.

I once landed out 13 times in a single season in the UK, going for it. Eventually I learned to read the sky better. Never did I meet a grumpy farmer and was always offered assistance or lunch or beverages. Eight years later, back in the UK at a different club, I managed to land one thermal short of home plate. I walked up to the farm (nice, but not manorish) house and spoke with the lady in charge. She let me in to phone the club after some begging, then shushed me out the door with a warning not to sh*t on her land. Dutch she was. Kind of reminded me of when the wife and I were traveling Europe one time. We slept in the Estate wagon (mattress and sleeping bags) every other day at camp grounds, staying at a Zimmer, B&B, or Gasthaus on the other nights. Well, we 'roughed it' in the estate car in northern Italy then made our way to Austria. We popped into a bank late morning to exchange some money. My wife, being fluent in German, was a bit put off by their remarks. I hadn't shaved that day. I guess they used some slang term for gypsies.

The only one that was controversial was when I was soaring locally and got caught in my first subsidence. It wasn't a micro-burst like we get in Colorado, but I was soaring near Ipswich and the sky started falling. I headed back to the glider port in the trusty SHK. I was only about 8 miles out, but the sky kept falling, though halfway there were a couple of cu forming. I pulled in under the cu, but it only reduced the sink to two knots. These clouds were forming in a sinking air mass. I turned back toward the club. It was going to be close. I pulled up, had a good look and pulled the airbrakes to land among the wind rows of the adjacent farm, slightly downhill from the glider club. Willing volunteers soon roared into the field with my trailer, we de-rigged and were back at the club in minutes. Unfortunately, I had to go apologize to the farmer for the boorish actions of my retrieve crew, as they had no permission to enter the property. Secondly, the farmer was on the local council, and considered us a menace, dangerous, and was interested in turning the club into profit as barley corn. Part of the remedy was for the CFI (UK chief flight instructor) to ground me for 30 days (during the best part of the season) as a corrective measure (for my helpers). Plus, one of my soaring mentors and partners, also a former CFI, to give me what amounted to a 'public bollocking' in the local pub. Of course, I had to show the proper amount of contriteness. The whole affair was political.

On the other hand, I did fly past a private air strip that we routinely used for off-field landing practice. Had I landed there and gotten a tow home, the rest would have been unnecessary.

Note that within the BGA, a CFI grounding applies to all BGA sites.

Frank Whiteley
  #5  
Old May 6th 13, 04:25 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Tony[_5_]
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Default Landing out on a corporate mega-farm or other non-traditional ornon-optimal place?

On Sunday, May 5, 2013 6:08:38 PM UTC-5, Papa3 wrote:
On Sunday, May 5, 2013 9:59:33 AM UTC-4, son_of_flubber wrote:

All of the land out stories that I've heard are about landing out on small family farms and the advice is always along the lines of, be friendly, let the farmer's kids sit in the glider etc...








Any stories about landing out in places other than on a small farm? Dealing with corporate security, corporate legal departments, bills for grossly inflated damages, pesticides, etc..








My favorite landout story involves a wetland, and quick while the EPA is not looking, a Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer. It is not my story, so I will not try to retell it, but maybe you get the picture of what I am looking for.

  #6  
Old May 6th 13, 02:36 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Wallace Berry[_2_]
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Default Landing out on a corporate mega-farm or other non-traditional or non-optimal place?

In article ,
son_of_flubber wrote:

All of the land out stories that I've heard are about landing out on small
family farms and the advice is always along the lines of, be friendly, let
the farmer's kids sit in the glider etc...

Any stories about landing out in places other than on a small farm? Dealing
with corporate security, corporate legal departments, bills for grossly
inflated damages, pesticides, etc..



Hey 92, tell the story of your landing in the gold mine!
  #7  
Old May 6th 13, 04:14 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
J9
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Default Landing out on a corporate mega-farm or other non-traditional ornon-optimal place?

P3

Thanks for making my Monday morning...I can almost hear his voice! (scary but true)! Now all we need is a deck and some beer. You guys really should put a book together. Classic stuff, and refreshingly non-politically correct.

J9
  #8  
Old May 6th 13, 04:57 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Wallace Berry[_2_]
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Posts: 122
Default Landing out on a corporate mega-farm or other non-traditional or non-optimal place?

In article ,
son_of_flubber wrote:

All of the land out stories that I've heard are about landing out on small
family farms and the advice is always along the lines of, be friendly, let
the farmer's kids sit in the glider etc...

Any stories about landing out in places other than on a small farm? Dealing
with corporate security, corporate legal departments, bills for grossly
inflated damages, pesticides, etc..

My favorite landout story involves a wetland, and quick while the EPA is not
looking, a Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer. It is not my story, so I will not try
to retell it, but maybe you get the picture of what I am looking for.


Hi 92, tell your story of landing the 1-26 in the gold mine.
  #9  
Old May 6th 13, 06:10 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Papa3[_2_]
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Posts: 753
Default Landing out on a corporate mega-farm or other non-traditional ornon-optimal place?

On Monday, May 6, 2013 11:14:28 AM UTC-4, J9 wrote:
P3



Thanks for making my Monday morning...I can almost hear his voice! (scary but true)! Now all we need is a deck and some beer. You guys really should put a book together. Classic stuff, and refreshingly non-politically correct.



J9


Yeah, it's one of my favorites. I haven't quite figured out how to post the famous Martha's Vinyard Memorial Day Weekend Retrieve and Love In without violating some sort of FCC regulations or risking physical injury from one or more of the involved parties. Maybe with sufficient obfuscation it can be told,

P3
  #10  
Old May 6th 13, 06:46 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
son_of_flubber
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Posts: 1,550
Default Landing out on a corporate mega-farm or other non-traditional ornon-optimal place?

On Sunday, May 5, 2013 7:08:38 PM UTC-4, Papa3 wrote:
..
..
..
Yo: 1987 Sports Class Nationals at Elmira, typical Elmira weather, HHH. The


This is exactly what I was looking for, but I only wish that you had delayed posting it for few days. Now I expect that anyone who comes to this thread with a good but somewhat lesser story will say, "Well I can't top that." and not bother to post their story. This is NOT a "Best Landout Story Ever in the World" competition. Please post "Personal Best Landout" stories.

As far as FARs go, let me state for the record, that stories posted in this thread are entirely fictional (wink, wink, nod, nod) and any resemblance to actual persons or places is purely coincidental. (Nice try FAA!)
 




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