BZ landout

It is a good thing that I came here to learn; because the lessons are coming fast.  Note here, that many of the things I call lessons are not necessarily things that I have NO knowledge of, they are just things that I realize I have not given them the attention they deserve.  Today is a case on point.  I have been taught, “When conditions are weak, get high and stay high.”  Well, the thermals were not really strong and I let my need to go fast exceed my need to stay high and it cost me a land out. Having said that, if I had to land out, THIS [Pic BZ land out] was the place to park my glider.  The people working there, the owners were off somewhere else, could not have been nicer to me.  Because the picture above did not do this place justice, I took this one so you could check out the nice digs from the front of the house.

Nice digs

The runway was easy to find.  I stopped at about the middle so I took pictures, looking east and then west.  There is a slightly shorter runway that is grass but VERY wide and well marked, that is a cross runway on the west end of the paved one.  I would have taken a picture of it too but it was a long way from BZ.

looking east

looking west

From the looks of the clouds, you might ask, how in the world did you land out?  Frank tried to console me by saying it was a weak day. I ended up there because I passed up a couple of lighter thermals heading for what appeared to be several promising looking clouds.  They all proved to be unfruitful.  At this point, Frank was following me and he was low too but found a good thermal and climbed away.  Earlier, he had alerted me to head toward “Flying Baron” since that was his bailout airport if he did not connect, great recommendation, Frank.

I picked the paved runway over the grass for 4 very good reasons:

1. I could see the house from over the horizon
2. It was pointed into the wind (navy guys like runways that point into the wind)
3. It was on my nose when I ran out to altitude looking for a thermal
4. It was long enough to land the space shuttle on

BZ