March 6 at Seminole: Windy but soarable – sort of

The good news for today was that there was good streeting with cloudbases in the 4500-5000′ range.  The bad news was that the cause of the streeting was the 25kt+ winds from the east – a dead crosswind for takeoffs and landings at Seminole.

Most pilots elected to stay on the ground today because of the windy conditions, but a few brave (or mentally challenged) individuals decided to try their luck.  Being one of the more mentally challenged types myself, I decided to give it a go and actually had a pretty good time, starting with a 8.5kt average climb from 2000′ to cloudbase at 4500′ – woo hoo!  I ran streets upwind and downwind for over 3 hours, never getting out of final glide range of Seminole.  Interestingly, I got to legally overfly Disney World a couple of times, staying well above the 3000′ msl TFR.

The only guys brave enough to get out of final glide range were the ones with steel thermals behind them, and sometimes even that wasn’t enough.  Wilfried Krueger (K2) got a little low on his way back from Winter Haven, and decided that he was going to motor home with his DG-800M.  Out comes the pylon, but nothing happens when  he presses the ‘Start’ button, and worse, he can’t even retract it!  Fortunately Wilfried isn’t terminally stupid and already had a good field picked out for just this eventuality, and landed his now 15:1 glider in a huge, smooth pasture.  To add insult to injury, once on the ground Wilfried discovered that the culprit was a popped circuit-breaker, and the engine ran fine!  Wisely he decided not to attempt a takeoff, and got a ride from a local farmer back to Seminole.    George Green (5) and I got to buff up our respective retrieve Karmas a bit by helping Wilfried with the retrieve, which turned out to be a piece of cake.  Unbelievably for Seminole, the land of locked gates and absentee owners, the guy with the key was right there when we showed up with the trailer – wow!

TA