Friday April 26 – A ‘Perry Day’ at Perry!

Photo courtesy of Glenn Holden

Photo courtesy of Glenn Holden

 

Well, today was the day we all come to Perry to experience, although it sure didn’t look that way until after grid time.  When I got up and looked out the Micro-Castle window, it was bright and sunny, and we just knew it was going to be a great day.  However, about 10 minutes later someone knocked on my window and told me to look again – a low cloud bank had just rolled in and now the day looked dismal and hopeless – yikes!

Fortunately our ace weatherman Scott Fletcher (SF) steadied our nerves at the morning meeting by telling us that the clouds we were seeing were “the only clouds in South Carolina at the moment” – not sure if that was a good or a bad  thing, but he seemed to think everything was going to work out.

The low clouds continued to block out the sun until grid time, and then we started to see some improvement.  The libelle was sent up to sniff, and after a half-hour or so of stumbling around in 1-2kt thermals to 2300′ agl, he suddenly started reporting 5kt climbs to 3500 agl, at which point he was recalled to the ground so the launch could start.  I was in the back of the bus today (after being #1 on the grid yesterday), so all I heard was the rumor of a launch for about 45 minutes, at which point I had to start getting serious about the prospect of getting flung into the sky.

The task today was another ‘Long MAT’, where the object of the exercise is to have more assigned turnpoints than you can finish at any reasonable speed, and you are free to return to Perry at any point and still get ‘speed’ points (assuming of course that you have achieved at least min distance).  However, today the 180 mile, 3 hr task turned out to be *way* too short for the fast guys, who were turning in 70+ mph speeds.  By start time we had cloud bases slightly above 5000′ with climbs in the 4-5kt range, and conditions improved from there to cloud bases above 6000′ out on course, with 8-10kt climbs available.  Everyone was flying with full water, and cruise speeds in the 100kt range were common.

I normally don’t talk too much about my own flights, but I just have to share this one, as it wound up being about equal parts spectacularly good, spectacularly bad, and spectacularly unique, all in one flight.  I was determined to do well today, and the conditions were right for a ‘hair on fire’ flight.  I started about 4-5 minutes behind and about 1-2 miles deeper in the start cylinder than the rest of the 15m pack, and caught most of them halfway down the second leg.  Coming out of the first turn (Saluda, about 35 miles northwest of Perry) going toward Allendale I started seeing some of the 18m ships, and in particular got to fly with Jae Walker (JW), flying his V2cxa-18 ship.  I could catch him on the run, but he was doing better than me in the climbs, so we duked it out nose-to-nose for the next 100 miles, neither pilot giving an inch to the other.  I had a bit of an advantage, as Jae was usually slightly ahead of me at the start of each cruise segment, so I could leech a bit until I caught up.  Then I would pull up beside him, basically wingtip to wingtip, and wave – it was great!  After all the mandatory turnpoints were accomplished, we all  had to figure out how to use up the remaining time (and in my case I needed another 42 minutes of distance at 75mph or another 52 miles or so).  Like a lot of others, I ran back along a cloud street toward the next-to-last turnpoint, figuring that was a known good leg, and like a lot of others I got halfway there (over an intermediate turnpoint) and decided that my original plan wasn’t going to work.  Unfortunately, my plan B turned out to be disastrous, and I wound up landing out at Fogles, a really nice grass strip about 15 miles from Perry.

Now you might think that would be a really bad end to a really great day, but it didn’t end there for me.  As I was cleaning up the glider for the retrieve (and after I had called in my outlanding to the retrieve desk) a man in a pickup truck arrives, and it turns out to be Chuck Fogle, eponymous owner of Fogles airport.  I thanked him profusely for having such a nice airport and allowing us glider pilots to use it, and he asked me if I needed a ride back to the airport.  I told him I had already contacted the retrieve desk, and my trailer would soon be on it’s way (I’m crewless, so I knew it might actually be quite a bit longer than ‘soon’, but I didn’t want to tell him that).  Chuck drives away, but then reappears about 10 minutes later, and says, “C’mon, I’ll give you a ride back to Perry”.  OK, I can take a hint, so I quickly called back to the retrieve desk and cancelled my trailer retrieve, and looked forward to a pleasant pickup truck ride back to Perry.  However, what actually happened is the pickup truck ride was only to his airplane hangar, where he keeps his immaculate, pristine, showroom-floor quality Stearman biplane, which he proceeds to roll out so he can *fly* me back to Perry!  I have ridden in, and even skydived out of, Stearmans before, but this was the very first time I’ve ever been retrieved from a landout in a Stearman!  As we flew back toward Perry, with the wind whistling by the open cockpit and listening to the throaty roar of the big rotary engine, watching the countryside roll by at 80 mph and 1000′, I realized that this was a perfect ending to a a really great ‘Perry Day’.  I would probably have been a lot happier had I not landed out, but I would also have missed a completely irreplaceable experience.  Regionals come and go, but ‘Perry Days’ and Stearman rides are forever ;-).

Weather prognosis for tomorrow isn’t particularly good, so today’s Perry Day could turn out to be the last one for the contest.  If so, this contest will end for me with a day that produced an interesting mix of really good/really bad/really good experiences – stay tuned!

Frank (TA)

 

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