Cherokee Kid Flight

Tony will post all the details later, but he and his Cherokee flew
from Sunflower Gliderport to Falls City, Nebraska. Should be good for
his Gold Distance! He is going to have a late night retreive, as his
crew should just be arriving now (9:00 CDST).

Look for details tomorrow on OLC! Way to go, Tony!!!!!

Steve Leonard

On May 2, 8:55*pm, Steve Leonard wrote:
Tony will post all the details later, but he and his Cherokee flew
from Sunflower Gliderport to Falls City, Nebraska. *Should be good for
his Gold Distance! *He is going to have a late night retreive, as his
crew should just be arriving now (9:00 CDST).

Look for details tomorrow on OLC! *Way to go, Tony!!!!!

Steve Leonard

just made it home at about 2:45 AM central time. it was a great
flight. late start with a ~1:30 PM tow and I didn't even have gold on
the mind figuring that i started too late. Just kept working downwind
although the wind was light, southwestish at less than 10 knots.
strong lift with cloudbases about 7500 AGL and not too bad sink.
Managed to connect with some convergence south of some rain showers
and barely turned (maybe 3 turns) in the last 40 miles. finished with
193.7 miles from Sunflower. Handicap is 1.54 so should be a pretty
respectable score on the OLC.

Hi Tony,

Congratulations! Well done. I can't wait to see the OLC page for the
flight.

Paul Remde

"Tony" wrote in message
...
On May 2, 8:55 pm, Steve Leonard wrote:
Tony will post all the details later, but he and his Cherokee flew
from Sunflower Gliderport to Falls City, Nebraska. Should be good for
his Gold Distance! He is going to have a late night retreive, as his
crew should just be arriving now (9:00 CDST).

Look for details tomorrow on OLC! Way to go, Tony!!!!!

Steve Leonard

just made it home at about 2:45 AM central time. it was a great
flight. late start with a ~1:30 PM tow and I didn't even have gold on
the mind figuring that i started too late. Just kept working downwind
although the wind was light, southwestish at less than 10 knots.
strong lift with cloudbases about 7500 AGL and not too bad sink.
Managed to connect with some convergence south of some rain showers
and barely turned (maybe 3 turns) in the last 40 miles. finished with
193.7 miles from Sunflower. Handicap is 1.54 so should be a pretty
respectable score on the OLC.

I plan to put the flight up on the OLC tonight. After we get the file
downloaded all properly for my gold distance claim. here is a write
up I posted on a few other airplane forums:

It was a good flight. I never thought it was going to happen.
Yesterday was "one of those days" at the airport. We got out about
10:30 and put the glider together. A few friends showed up and we
needed to put Leah's glider in its trailer to free up space in the
hangar. So we got to started on that and it took about 5 times longer
than any of expected or wanted. Finally finished it about 12:45 and
the sky was already exploding and the glider still wasn't quite ready
for flying. I had promised Leah some flights in the 2-33 before we
went but she graciously realized that the lift was good and I should
go fly, so she freed me from that obligation. I finally launched about
1:30.

experience shows that my glider is about a 30 mph glider when flying
cross country. In order to fly the 300 km (186 miles) required for the
gold badge I would have to fly something like 6 hours which I
immediately assumed was going to be impossible. So I figured I'd just
head downwind and try to fly further than I had ever flown before.
Shea and Summer, two of my students, were crewing.

I initially flew straight north as my GPS was figuring the winds out
of the south. Lift was good and I got off tow right in a 5-600 fpm
thermal and climbed to about 8000 feet. Flew over Hutchinson and just
ran north. Lift was good and sink wasn't too bad. I was averaging
about 35 mph with a 5-10 mph tailwind.

I called Salina tower to make sure that the restricted area was cold.
It was, which was good because I was headed right through it and
didn't want to have to circumnavigate. I noticed the wind was shifting
more out of the southwest so about the time I crossed I-70 just west
of Salina I turned northeast. Shortly after this I hit my low point of
2900 MSL, which must've been around 1500 AGL. yikes! But I flew over a
nice area of brown/black fields and caught a 600 fpm thermal back up
to over 8000 feet. The next 4 thermals I caught were progressively
higher, the next one I caught at about 4000 ft, then 5000, 6000 etc.
Pretty soon I was booking from cloud to cloud, thermalling under about
every 3rd one and generally averaging about 7000 feet. I was around 4
hours and starting to get cold, had passed 120 miles which was further
than my previous best, and feeling pretty good.

I noticed that the clouds behind me were starting to die but it was
pushing 6 PM and the sun was getting lower. There was still good
looking clouds ahead of me so I kept cruising. I was watching the GPS
and creeping towards the nebraska border. The idea of making another
state really sounded good. At one point when I was about 15 or 20
miles south of the border i tuned in the weather at Beatrice and
learned that the wind there was out of the NORTH and gusty.
Interesting. Where I was the wind was out of the south and there was a
line of rain between me and there. I also noticed a really killer
looking street of clouds on the south edge of the rain. I put 2 and 2
together and figured that the opposing winds were converging along
that line, so I decided to work my way towards it. However there was
too much of a gap to make a straight run so I just stayed in the good
clouds and eased my way over.

The last 40 or so miles were the fastest. I contacted the convergence
area, initially with reduced sink but I was running at 50 mph and
losing ~100 fpm. Altitude was still 7000 on average. I was down to
about 6000 when I really got into the convergence. Turned parallel to
the clouds the best I could figure and started climbing at 400 fpm
while flying straight! I did this for about 10 or 15 miles I think and
gained 1000 feet or so when I flew out of the lift. by this time I was
up around 160 miles and gold distance was starting to seem like a
possibility.

there wasn't a lot of lift indicators out ahead of my but I was a bit
over a mile AGL and about 25 miles from my goal of 186 miles. my
glider is 23:1 in calm air and it seemed to me that the sink had been
not so bad or even "reduced sink" where i wasn't climbing but i wasn't
sinking as much as i should've. I ran at about 50 mph for the final
glide, slowing slightly if i would find a nibble of lift or something.
Once I got to 175 miles and was still at 3 or 4000 AGL I figured that
I had gold distance in the bag.

Turns out I was more or less headed right for Falls City, NE and
they've got a nice airport there so I planned to land there if I could
make it. I passed the 186 mile mark and let out a bit of a victory
yell. Still at about 2500 feet at that point and 7 miles from the
airport. The air was dead smooth, and actually had been quite smooth
for the last several hours. A sort of magical condition that happens
late in the day where the lift is still strong but the sink isn't to
bad and the turbulence all softens up. Matt and I call it the "Magic
Hour". In this case it was the "Magic 2 or 3 hours".

I arrived over the airport at about 1500 AGL and did a pattern and
landed. Could've maybe stretched it to 200 miles but the convenience
of landing at an airport after a flight where all goals had been met
trumped the unknown of landing in a field. I had tried to alert my
crew where I was going although one wrong turn and a fiasco at a gas
station had left them far behind and out of radio range. Nice thing
was I had good cell reception. They were about 50 miles behind when I
landed, at 7:30ish, right around a 6 hour flight!

I now have more hours in my glider in the last 2 weeks than all of
last year.

We got everything loaded up and were on the road shortly after 10 PM.
Got to my apartment about 2:30 AM. I was in bed by 3:15 AM. One of my
crew had to drive to hutchinson, she had school at 7. I think she got
to bed about 4:30. ouch.

all in all it was a great flight, i couldn't have asked for much
better. We'll download the trace tonight and do the paperwork for my
Gold Distance claim. Now I just need to get a 3000 meter altitude gain
to finish the Gold Badge. Also, I should be able to establish several
state records that are so far unclaimed with this flight so I'm
looking forward to that. There's also a fair chance that with my
dogleg course and handicap I could win the day on the Online Contest
which would be monumental I think. Most importantly, I think this will
be a really competitive claim for the annual Wood Wings trophy for the
longest flight by a wood glider in the state of Kansas.

In article
,
Tony wrote:

I plan to put the flight up on the OLC tonight. After we get the file
downloaded all properly for my gold distance claim. here is a write
up I posted on a few other airplane forums:

Wonderful writeup, and of course a great flight. Thanks for posting it,
and congratulations! Next up, diamond distance?

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon

On 5/3/2010 9:11 AM, Tony wrote:
Nifty flight write-up snipped

Great job, great write-up, great fun! Congrats, too!!!

Bob W.

P.S. You average 30 mph in the Cherokee?!? My 1-26's would weep if they
knew.

the flight is up on the OLC!

Winning the day in the US. 2nd in the world.