Well, the good news for today was that it wasn’t a ridge day – I was kinda tired of riding the inside of a washing machine for three or four hours, so the chance to actually fly more than 100′ off the deck, and at significantly more sedate speeds was a welcome change. Ace weatherman Richard Kellerman (QV) told us that we should have very good lift at times, very few clouds of the cumulus variety, but potentially significant clouds of the mid-level stratus type. Winds were progged to be out of the west at 10-15kt – not good enough for ridge flying (yay!!). So, the task today was a 3-hour ‘long MAT’, with the first turn to the north at either Lockhaven (Club class) or Nesbit (Sports class) , then south to Wagoners Gap and back north again to Shade Mountain for both classes, then home. The nominal distance for Sports Class was about 175 miles, so right at 60 mph average to make the entire course in 3 hours.
At grid time, everyone and their brother could see that the potential for mid-level clouds was rapidly becoming a reality, so the normal start-gate roulette became more like a mad rush for the exits. Club class was off first, and pilots started streaming out on course soon after their gate opened. Sports was off second, and we had farther to go, so we were really chomping at the bit. Most pilots started out the top, as we were getting 5-6kt climbs to over 7000′ msl before the start, and the start height was only 4000′ msl – yikes! So, we all spoilered down from 7000 to just under 4000′, waited out the 2 minutes, and then closed the spoilers and started climbing again. If you did this right, you instantly started climbing at 5-6kt all the way back up to 7000′ (almost enough to glide the 40 miles to the first turn). However, it is very difficult to core a thermal with spoilers out, so several pilots reported that when they closed their spoilers they discovered that their thermal had disappeared and they had to start all over, now from below 4000′ with the clock ticking – oops!
I normally don’t like to talk about my own flights (with the possible exception of the ‘Perry Day’ story), but this one was so spectacular I have to share. I started out with John Seymour (SM), and actually beat him to the first turn by a fair margin. Unfortunately I was completely alone in the blue at this point and consequently he and a bunch of others caught me at the start of the second leg. And by ‘bunch of others’, I mean Karl Striedieck and passenger Mark Gardner (Duo, KS), Heinze and Karin Weissenbuehler (Duo, HW) , John Seymour (ASG-29, SM), and Erik Nelson (Ventus 2ax, 5E). About a third of the way down the second leg and with at least 125 miles to go, it was completely overcast with almost no sun on the ground anywhere. Now I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember ever looking out my canopy at a complete overcast and saying to myself, “Oh, just another 125 miles – piece of cake!”. But that is just exactly what we did, thanks to Mifflin magic and Karl’s wizardry, and a little bit of help from the rest of the ‘Fab 5’. For over two hours we flew in tight formation, weaving in and out to find the best air, never going fast, but not stopping much either. Occasionally one or the other of us (mostly Karl, I admit) would find a thermal and we would all cooperate to core it up as much as possible. Thermals today were extremely rough and narrow, so bank angles well beyond 45 degrees were the minimum requirement for entry into this effort. These were not your normal ‘Seniors’ thermalling techniques!
The ‘long MAT’ task type has the unique feature that you can cut the task short and still get ‘speed points’, although degraded due to arriving below minimum time. At the second turnpoint (Wagoner’s Gap), we were almost high enough to glide from there back to Mifflin. We would be way early of course, but even degraded speed points beats a landout any day, and we still had another 70-80 miles to go under a complete overcast. As we rounded the turn, I watched Karl like a hawk to see which way he was going to go – west toward Mifflin, or northwest toward Shade Mountain? He wavered a bit (he told me later he was thinking exactly the same thing), but then steadied out on a northwest course toward Shade. I slapped my inner coward around a little bit, and went right along with him. By this time I was completely convinced that this particular group of pilots could do anything, so flying another 80 miles or so in snow, rain, and overcast was just another day at the office. We kept going, and kept finding energy lines and thermals, and before we knew it we were at Shade Mountain with 500′ over final glide at MC 3.0. At this point Erik and I broke away from the group and pointed our noses directly at Mifflin, and I managed to work my final glide situation up to about 800′ over final glide at MC 3.0 – and about then the wheels started coming off the carriage. Erik and I watched our glide margin go from 800′ over to about 500′ under in the space of about 15 miles. Without Karl to manufacture thermals for us, we were both forced down onto Jack’s mountain with about 20 miles to go, with winds that were only 20-30 degrees off the ridge direction, and only about 10-15kt. Now Jack’s mountain 20 miles north of Mifflin is not a happy place – in fact, that section of Jack’s is called ‘death valley’ because there is absolutely no place to land until you get about 10 miles from Mifflin. Fortunately for me, I was about 500′ higher and about 1 mile behind Erik, so I could watch as he struggled along the ridge. I could see he wasn’t falling off the ridge, and he was going at least as fast as I was (about 70kt), so I was fairly confident that if I wound up down at ridgetop it would work at least well enough to get me out into the landable valley area. As it turned out, I was able to float along, well above ridgetop all the way to the Mifflin gap, arriving at the finish with altitude to spare. In the meantime, well behind us Karl had manufactured yet another thermal for the three remaining ‘Fab 5’ members – this one an 8kt boomer at about 18 miles away. Consequently, we all wound up finishing within a minute or so of each other – a Fab finish for the Fab 5! On the preliminary scoresheet, the Fab 5 scored 1-5 for the day – Erik was 1st, Karl was 2nd, John Seymour was 3rd, I was 4th, and Heinz/Karin was 5th – what a spectacular way to finish a spectacular flight!
Back on the ground, Karl shook my hand and told me that was the most fun he has had in years, and that the superb cooperation exhibited to that point by the group was what convinced him to press on to Shade Mountain rather than cutting the task short. He also said he had absolutely no idea why everything he tried seemed to work – all he had to do was think “I’d like a thermal for 5, please”, and one would appear on command.
I wish everyone could have been there and seen this group in action – it was like poetry in flight. We all had enough experience (I was by far the least experienced of the group) to understand how to cooperate and fly in close quarters without interfering with or endangering others, and we all were good enough at high-bank-angle thermalling to cooperatively core the very narrow and bubbly thermals. Not one word was spoken over the radio the entire time, but everyone knew where everyone else was, all the time. Karl was clearly the group leader, and the rest of us just tried to keep up and help out when we could. When all was said and done, we accomplished a cross-country soaring miracle on a day where I wouldn’t even have assembled my glider. Whoever can manage the privilege of riding with Karl in his Duo always gets their money’s worth, but I think Mark Gardner won the lottery today – it just doesn’t get any better than this!
We all got to relive our day and tell inappropriate lies at dinner tonight in the maintenance hangar. The menu was salad and several different varieties of chili, topped off with several different cakes and pies for desert. And of course, copious amounts of beer and conversation. The atmosphere was a bit more relaxed than normal, as we are pretty sure that tomorrow will be a rain day, and I think most of us are looking forward to a bit of a rest after three hard days of glider racing. My personal plan is to sleep until about 10 am, and then read a book or do some programming – nothing whatsoever to do with soaring ;-).
Stay tuned,
Frank (TA)
