How I spent my summer vacation (long)

How I spent my summer vacation!
By CH

It started out as a week of racing and then a week
of long flights in my venerable Ventus B intermixed
with some hiking and movies. Well just as the week
of racing was ending up the with a respectable 6th
place in region 9 at Parowan, considering a land out
on day 5 at Filmore, the weather started to really
turn on for the great basin area. I headed out on Sunday
for a leisurely flight from Parowan to Ely with my
more than wonderful crew Rose (as you'll see later)
and our 'girls'(Yorkies) Jodie and Jenny, running happily
around the motor home driving far below. As cloud base
was above 18K, I was able to stay well ahead of my
crew and soon lost radio contact. I flew past Ely and
followed super cloud streets out past Eureka about
20 miles and thought I should stay close to Ely to
get in touch with my crew. This proved to be difficult
as I had heard nothing from the girls for about 3 hours
now and I was approaching a 500k with lots of clouds
and plenty of day left to fly. Being the optimist,
I figured that they had stopped for a little shopping
(they have prior's for this) so I flew over toward
Garrison and Lincoln and then back again to round out
a 750k when I heard from Rose that she was pulling
into Ely. When I landed she still wasn't at the airport
and I began to worry that she had problems. Oh, just
about then I remembered that I had a cell phone and
it would probably work. I called her just as she was
pulling in.

It turns out that she had broken down in the motor
home twice with fuel problems and was
delayed and hour each time. This led to Monday being
a get the motor home repaired day and
after a quick trip to Napa, fuel pump in hand I approached
a repair station and thought I was
lucky enough to be able to get the pump replaced the
same day. A few hundred dollars later,
(motor homes are more like airplanes than most know)
the pump was installed and we were back
in business. Ok TS1 was arriving tonight and tomorrow
we were going to try some 1000 K's, I
was getting psyched up.

I got up early on Tuesday to lay out some possibilities
and work out a declaration for my as of yet
not proved new EW Microrecorder. I picked Jackpot,
Hudson and Geyser as TP's putting Ely on
the mid leg for a 1028 declared FAI triangle. I managed
to get out of Ely early and had 7kts at
11:00am and hardly a turn for the first 125miles. Someone
turned off the switch 35 miles out of
Jackpot and I had very poor visibility and no lift
above 10k all the way into and out of Jackpot
which was really slowing down the flight. I had figured
on 8 hours of flight time max to get in
the 1000k and this was not helping. I finally got above
11k when I got back to Mary's river and
worked south to get to the really good clouds and another
100+ miles with little turning. I ran
into the same problem the last 40 miles into Hudson
as over development had set in and was
chasing the sun back eastward. As I had a glide to
Austin AP and the sun was on the ground just
east of there, I throttled back to 40:1 and flew a
2 kt Macready to 1200 agl and 2 kts lift to try and
stay afloat. I don't think I have ever circled as much
low as I couldn't get above 10k for the next
100 miles with the terrain at 6K and 30 miles between
landing spots. Every time I would see a little development
below the overcast, I would head east get low and take
1-2kts for a 1k gain and move on. I kept trying to
get to the sun but the ground kept getting n the way!
TS1 was still flying near Ely and confirmed that there
was sun on the ground and still good lift out there.
Well after 7+ hours in the air my last ditch effort
to get home, I had abandoned the last turn point by
this time, I was diving and leaving the safety of Eureka
AP going for the dark bottomed Cu under total overcast
on the east side of Long Valley dry lake using the
lake bed as a alternate if it didn't work. I guess
this wouldn't be as good of a story if the Cu had been
working but it wasn't and trying to pick out a patch
to land on became my new priority.


Having arrived under the cu at 1000 agl and 3 miles
east of the dry lake, I turned back, put down
the gear and began to assess the landing options. The
tp in the GPS looked very far from the
barely visible road /goat path that went into the lake
bed. It also looked very soft and, as I found out later
from Carl Herold that would have been a very difficult
retrieve. Anyway I chose a small circular patch that
looked lower and the very bottom of the lake bed and
closer to the road I thought was there. I had little
time with one circle over the landing spot before pulling
the spoilers and landing. As I set up I saw that it
was quite a bit lower and bowl shaped which put me
touching down in the middle of a 500 foot diameter
bowl. It was very soft which was good as the density
altitude of about 9k had my ground speed up there and
I went through the other side of the bowl, and I do
mean through as it launched me up and into the bank
on the other side. It turned out OK and I came to rest
on the side of the bank with the gear buried in about
10 inches of soft sand.

As I was sitting there feeling sorry for myself I heard
water running. It suddenly dawned on me that I was
almost out of drinking water and that trickle I heard
was what was left of my ballast. I jumped out and refilled
my camelbak with what was left. I was amazed to find
that I had cell phone coverage and called my crew to
start getting ready for the retrieve. I mentioned to
her that I was going to need help getting the plane
out to grab someone and bring them along. Well, when
I started hiking toward what I thought was the road
coming in I never found it and walked 3 miles out and
up to the mountain foothills before I contacted the
pavement. I could have sworn that the goat path I saw
from the air should have been where I walked but I
must have gotten mixed up. It was well after dark when
Tony, Paval (visiting Ely from Czechoslovakia) and
Rose showed up in the motor home and found me lying
down on the road awaiting them. Now this is a nice
paved road and in the 3 hours or so it took them to
get to me from Ely I did not once see or hear another
human or vehicle for 50 miles in any direction. After
dark there was not a single light anywhere and although
I had cell coverage, I was starting to get nervous
because my crew’s was spotty and I thought that they
might have taken a wrong turn. As it turned out I was
just a long way up the valley from the main road and
all of the suicidal jack rabbits (I think they had
never seen a vehicle before) were proof of that. Deciding
that it was too dark and that I would be needing a
4 wheel drive vehicle, I opted to wait until the next
day to retrieve the glider.

So Wednesday started out with me begging for a four
wheel drive vehicle. As there is no car rental places
in Ely James at the FBO was extremely kind in letting
me use the airport Nissan 4 wheel drive truck. He urged
me to take a extra 5 gallons of gas as the tank is
quite small in the truck (Charlie clarified this by
telling me that it was really for if I got it stuck
I was to pour it on the outside and----well you get
the idea) Tony, Paval and myself headed out to retrieve
the glider and as luck had it after getting back to
where I found the road we went a little further and
there was the goat path I had seen from the air. I
left the trailer on the pavement for the first run
in case I had to turn around or got stuck. But after
three miles and a couple of missed turns we came up
over a hill and there it was less than 50 feet from
the road. I still can’t figure how I missed it the
night before. So I turned around to go get the trailer
and about half way back out I came across a large piece
of tailpipe in the path and Tony says “I think that
came off us” and I says I think your right! Thanks
to James and Charlie for being so understanding, especially
when I had to order the parts and did not have time
to install them. So the rest of the retrieve went without
incident. We carried the wings and fuselage up the
hill and into the trailer with little effort and were
on our way back to Ely. A nice La Fiesta dinner for
the crew and planning for another long flight tomorrow.


Thursday brought us a little closer to the ground for
cloud base was only 14k I started out going south past
Caliente to a peak southwest by about 10miles. Then
turned north as the lift was very broken up and only
averaging about 3-4kts. Much more of the same as I
headed north until later in the day when after turning
Peak 8828 west of Wendover and a 110 miles north of
Ely it started to really turn on and I was able to
fly fast down to about 30 miles past Currant 80 miles
out of Ely. I turned for home and had plenty to spare
as I flew 10miles past Ely to the north in for an OLC
1039km flight. After landing Steve Fossett and Terry
Delore came by and did a low pass in the ASH25Mi that
they had just done a new 1250k speed triangle world
record. Both guys had an infectious smile (besides
wearing beer instead of champagne) for the record they
had just achieved. Beer, food and great company as
711, TS1, and our crews joined us in one of the most
magnificent sunsets I have ever seen.

Friday, I decided to give my crew a break and fly
down to Jean so we could spend some quality time in
Vegas that evening. So we set out on the same XC I
tried last year and only made it to Currant. This year
was going to be different, after all I had just flown
a 1000k! Well the clouds ended about 30 miles south
of Ely and as I flew further SW towards Tonapah the
top of the lift kept going down and got further apart.
As I turned the corner careful to stay out of the Nevada
Test site restricted air space and got to Beatty the
top of the lift was around 8K with an occasional one
to 11k. I was moving excruciatingly slow and think
this has to be the worlds slowest 500k to date. I had
just enough glide fighting a 20kt head wind most of
the way to get to Jackass where I tried to tank up
to get up into the Pahrump valley and Calavada Meadows
for the next alternate. Unfortunately the day was getting
late and my crew was getting tired so I looked for
a convenient place to land on the way to Vegas. Searching
the Garmin196 database I found what appeared to be
just the right ticket. Red Rock 7 miles south of the
restricted air space listed as private and 122.8 as
CTAF. A town a few miles away and only a mile off of
95 just where it turns to a four lane hwy. Perfect
right? Well, I directed my crew into the completely
abandoned airport with the altitude I had left (I told
you I was going slow). And proceeded to set up a low
pass to check the wind ( and get some thrill from this
frustrating flight) when I noticed some “vehicles with
lights”coming in the way my crew did. As I flew overhead
I could see machine guns and flak vest on about 6 men
that looked serious. I pulled up and landed and rolled
up to the ramp about 50 feet from where they were surrounding
Rose and the motor home. Now this was quite a picture.
If you have ever met Rose she is 4'11' blonde and has
6 guys standing around her like she was Saddam himself.
I opened the canopy and yelled “Please guys don’t scare
her” and all I could here was Rose laughing (she does
that when she gets nervous). They weren’t laughing
and promptly came over to escort me over to see there
Lieutenant and explain what I was doing there! Well
now, I work for the government and understand what
a hassle they can be IF they want to be. So I spent
the next 2 hours trying to make them, the Nye county
sheriff’s dept and the Mercury duty officer (Nevada
test site Dept of Energy test facility) believing that
I had not landed there intentionally or with any intention
of blowing up their facility. And although there is
no doubt in my mind that I was completely legal, especially
from a aviation stand point, I didn’t want to have
to prove that in court! And after much sucking up,
letting them search everything from cell phones, camera’s
and motor home to detailed pictures of my panel and
GPS systems and assuring them that I did not overfly
Mercury (even though its not in the restricted air
space) they escorted me to the freeway with the warning
“Don’t come back”. And we were on our way to Vegas.

We got to Vegas just after dark and finding that the
RV park at the Circus Circus had raised there rates
to $70+ a night we decided to drive on to Laughlin
and more reasonable rates. We got there around midnight
and set up and got to sleep. We spent the next day
and a half there enjoying the river and casino’s night
life and movies giving my crew a well deserved break
As we prepared to leave on Sunday morning for the short
drive back to Prescott, the money pit I so affectionately
call the motor home decided that the fuel pump we put
in was not installed right and quit running before
we got out of the park.

Now I’m sitting here, glad to be back at work (if for
no other reason than to pay for the money pit) with
another bill for 400+ and planning a trip back to Laughlin
to pick it up. Having used Rose’s parents for the retrieve
from there, I guess I ll be hitching it back to get
the hulk back to Prescott! All in all some absolutely
wonderful soaring flights, some absolutely hard soaring
flights and some absolutely wonderful friends to spend
time with. I guess we will just have to try it again
next year!

Some acknowledgments in order of appearance, thanks
go out to the following, without whom this could not
have happened: Tony Smolder, Tom and Jodie Dukerich
(yea your as good as married), Harry, Barb, Mikey and
Heather Smith, Randy Acre, Tom Kelly, Pam Ted and Riley
Wagner, John and Brenda Seaborn, Rick and Joanna Culbertson,
Pavel, Charlie Hayes, James, Carl Herold, the wonderful
ex marines mercenaries at Mercury and all of the mechanics
that have treated my money pit with such care!

Thanks All Hope to see MOST of you next year!)