Sunday, April 9, 2000

Plummeting over the back of St Helena!

Well yes, I did "sink like a rock" over the back of St Helena.  I took off first, hoping to fly to Sacramento at least, but after an hour of fairly sporting air up to 1500ft. or so over launch I decided to bail over the back and try for Crazy Creek.  A year before I had gone over with 5700ft. and made the other side of Middletown, and I had heard of Todd making it to CC with even less than that.  There were clouds over the back, and while I didn't really expect to reach them, I thought I would probably make the ridge behind, and if not land somewhere around Middletown.  The wind (judging by my GPS, which I was carrying for the first time) was about 10 mph from the NW, so I knew I would be cross wind, but I thought little of it.

I left with 5200ft, and hit severe sink straight away.  I assumed that I would soon fly through this really bad stuff, and by the time I began to realise that this was like, "really bad sink" there was no way I was able to return, so I had no choice but to carry on.  It was also very turbulent, and I was having trouble even keeping the wings level.  I wasn't in a headwind - my GPS speed agreed with my ASI, but the sink and turbulence just got worse and worse.  Pretty soon it was obvious that I wasn't going to make the next ridge, in fact I wasn't even going to make Middletown at this rate!  I called over the radio that it was evil back here and not to try to follow (probably superfluous advice!), and began to look at the ground for likely LZs.

Let me tell you, there aren't many, and just driving down the road on the way to Middletown and looking out of the window doesn't tell you much! There were a couple of ploughed looking fields to the NW of the casino, but I was in a continuous 1000ft/min sink and I knew I wasn't going to make it that far.  I flew towards another field to the east of the road, but even as I did so I could see that it was newly planted with grapes. There was a sort of open area below, to the east of the road, with a few scattered trees - it looked big enough, with luck!  It had a road running E-W across it, and sure enough, there were power lines along it.  There was no way I was going to try that.  I was now getting a bit desperate, still in over 1000ft/min sink (it doesn't take long to run out of air at that rate), there was nowhere below or ahead.  My only hope was the green field to the east of the road as you first come down from St Helena.  It looked a long way off, but it was the only place left, so I did a swift 90 degree right turn and flew south towards it, still sinking like a rock.

For a while I thought I wasn't going to make it, and began to wonder which patch of forest I was going to try to land in, but I made it with about 100ft to spare.  It was very turbulent down here, the field is fairly long but narrow and surrounded by tall trees. I was totally focused on not hitting a tree.  I decided to go straight in, heading south, which was slightly upslope.  I could see the trees waving around in the wind, and I knew that this would be a downwind landing, but I wasn't the least bit worried about that.  There was no way I was going to to try to fly to the far end of the field and do a 180 low down - all I wanted to do was to get the glider down to within a few feet of the ground under some sort of control without hitting anything!  I decided right away to use my drogue, skimmed over the top of two pine trees with about 6 feet (lower than I planned - I was even momentarily concerned about my drogue catching in the branches!), came in pretty steeply and had a pretty reasonable arrival, all things considered.  I didn't exactly land elegantly, but I didn't even drop the nose.  I was VERY happy to be there.  On a 1 - 10 scale of exciting landings I have ever made, this was at least an 8!

Next time you drive down the road stop and look at this field.  You might have to use it one day!

Leo