Saturday, April 1, 2000

A not so good day

Saturday it was back to Elk (North of Clear Lake, CA) for what looked to be an epic day. I was sure this day would be good for some XC. Six of us met at the LZ, Roy, Tom, Bill, Ernie, Scot and myself. Conditions in the LZ looked good with light winds. There had been some smoke from a couple of forest fires, but that was well to the North West and the XC route looked clear. I had a driver so everything looked good to go. We loaded up a couple of trucks and headed up to launch.

At the top, things looked pretty good for the North launch. Every couple of minutes a nice thermal would blow through at about 15 mph. Everyone seemed pretty upbeat and ready to go. As we were setting up, we noticed that occasionally, a thermal would blow up from the South side. This did not seem too bad because the North side was still getting cycles. The top of the ridge at launch is only about 20' wide so it does not seem that unusual to get cycles up both sides.

I was first to get set up and ready to go. I was a little disappointed by what I saw was happening to the winds. The cycles up both sides were decreasing, now about every 5 to 7 minutes, and they were much lighter, only about 7 mph. I decided I was going to be the wind dummy. I sat on launch for almost 10 minutes, waiting for a cycle. There were times that the tell-tales down the hill were indicating a cycle coming up the hill, but the tell-tale on my glider was indicating a wind at my back. Finally everything lined up and I launched. Now, I run about 20 miles a week, but I was having second thoughts about running all the way to the LZ. My feet felt like I was still running on the top of the bushes below launch, then I heard a snap as I hit the stick that held one of the lower tell-tales, snapping it in two. After what seemed like much too long I started to pull away from the hill, right into the land of sink.

The air was very trashy and felt strange. At first I was wondering if I had forgotten to put in one of the tip battons. The glider just would not fly straight. I worked my way around the ridge toward the LZ and hopefully some lift. There was a couple of small bumps, once about 200 fpm up. I tried a 360 and completely lost it. I was still going down at an alarming rate so I continued to the LZ. All the typical house thermal spots offered nothing. I arrived over the LZ at 500' agl. I made a 360 and unzipped. When I got down to 400' I hit the first real lift of my short flight. I circled for about 5 minutes wondering if I should zip back up or land. I could not get up past 500' and the air was still very trashy. I decided to make an effort to get on the ground.

After last weekend's broken bones, I was very aware of the rotor that could form in a South wind. The windsock was indicating a wind from the South. I circled just South of the knob were the rotor formed and got set up for my landing. I passed the windsock at about 20' and thought this would be an uneventful landing. But 20' was as low as I could get. Just as I went to the down tubes I got popped up to 40', so I went back to the base tube and got back to about 10' when the same thing happened again, and so it went for two more times. Now I was running out of room. I had passed two landing areas, threaded my way around some large bushes and was down to the last clear area. I started to look at some large soft looking bushes at the end that I could land in to stop my progress. As luck would have it, they were not needed. I had a nice soft no-step landing about 50' before the end of the clearing.

Once on the ground I radioed that I was OK and what I thought of conditions. I had lost a lot of my confidence. As the newbie, I was wondering if I just screwed up and could not find any lift. Tom launched after I did and managed only three 360's in some lift for his entire flight. The winds were light from the South in the LZ and he made a very nice landing. About 3 seconds after he landed the winds switched 180 deg. and came from the North at about 5. Bill was next. He got in about 5 minutes in weak lift before he was over the LZ. He made a nice down wind to final turn and rolled out at about 40'. And was not coming down! He made three large S turns and was still at 40'. He finally broke through and got on the ground without getting wet (the creek is to North of the LZ we were using).

I heard Ernie on the radio reporting he was getting drilled. He made one 360 and was on final. The wind was back to the South. The LZ is about a 3 to 1 glide from launch so you can imagine what great lift we were all getting. He popped his drogue chute and made it through the lift to an uneventful landing. Seeing his chute made me think that I should have used mine. Now I know better. Everyone was reporting long runs on launch with trashing conditions immediately after launch.

Scot was last to launch. From the description of the the two people that witnessed it, it was one of the most exciting in a long time. He had a clean launch and immediately turned left to stay as close to the ridge as possible. A few seconds later the trashy air everyone had been dealing with dealt him a blow, tipping him up on a wing tip with no airspeed. Scot had to suck in the bar and dive for the trees in order to get enough airspeed to whip it around and back into clearer air. Scot was compensated for this harrowing episode by having the longest flight of the day. He worked his way around the mountain to the South and found a convergence on the other side. We could see it from the ground. The smoke from the fires to the North was meeting the wind from the South. Scot decided to go for some XC but as soon as he left the convergence, he got drilled. He was down in the LZ about 5 minutes later.

Roy, the last of the pilots on the hill, had decided after the first few launches that the sled ride down to a bumpy LZ wasn't worth the risk. He maybe made the best decision of the day, breaking down his glider and driving down. With Roy's history as a local sky god, his example is worth remembering.

The only one who had a good day was my driver, who scored 6 chicks and a case of pollywogs.

Vince