Well, as I write this from my motel room Saturday morning, Day 1 of SSB’s XC encampment in Dalhart is in the bag.
As I suspected, it was a long, busy day and I finally got back to my room last night at 10pm…
Most of the folks from Boulder were still enroute to DHT when we went out to the airport in the morning, so the three of us here from FLF decided to get assembled and then wait for the towplane to show.
One of the great things about this camp is the incredible amount of hard-surface ramp area and the hangar facilities the airport folks make available to us for this camp. We backed our trailers into a huge hangar and put our ships together out of the hot Texas sun, which was something I could easily get addicted to! An even greater bonus was our ability to store our birds in there overnight. Having access to the hangar eliminates the worry about the weather forcing a rig/de-rig decision, which is a very nice feature of this camp I’m enjoying greatly!
One thing I was surprised about was the fair amount of traffic out of Dalhart…there is the constant come & go of the aerial applicators located on the north end of the field, as well as many training flights by folks flying a Dornier turboprop. Traffic-wise, it all works…we leave the runway environs for the working folks and use the massive ramp space immediately west of 17/35 for our staging and takeoffs/landings. Even though things around the airport were busy from time to time, it never got to the point where folks interfered in each others operations.
Dick Hogue finally showed up with the Pawnee towplane and first to launch was WGC team member John Seaborn who quickly disappeared to the south and was the last to land yesterday evening after completing a flight down to Tucumcari, NM up to Clayton, NM and then back to the Dalhart area. FLF-er Morris Carter (62) took a tow in his 1-35 and headed east. Later we would learn Morris would be buying the first dinner of the camp as he settled his ship in a nice field east of here between Dalhart and Sunray, Texas.
Dave Kammeyer (XLT) and I launched and generally hung around the local area getting the lay of the land. Conditions around DHT were what I would call “quasi-blue”, with good looking Cu fields visible far north and south, but the local area seemed to be mostly short-cycling puffies. I bumped around off tow for a while in 2 and 3 knot lift before finally hooking onto a good one that was an elevator ride up to my high point of 10,600′ MSL. I was having a difficult time connecting the dots between where the thermal source was and the Cu that it developed and did a lot of sniffing around upwind of the Cu’s I was under trying to locate it with limited success. That evening while I was talking to John Seaborn about it and picking his brain, he said he’d noticed that the thermals appeared to be better organized and stronger on the “downwind” side from its Cu overhead not upwind! That observation took a lot of what I’ve read and observed about soaring weather and turned it on its head and left me scratching mine! Just another opportunity to demonstrate that the learning never stops in this sport!
By yesterday afternoon, most all of the gang from Boulder had appeared and things are all coming together for a great week. Our last member from FLF will roll in this evening and will fly with us the rest of the week. Today will be more assembly (for some!) and then the camp starts in earnest, with the serious XC efforts beginning.
Dinner with the group at the Bar H Steakhouse wrapped up a full first day, an enjoyable meal made even better by such a diverse and interesting group of folks. I will try to update again tomorrow, that is unless spending the night “camping” in the cockpit of my glider somewhere!
Rob Schroer
ZAP
