A Mid-April (dare we say it?) Epic Day!

A Mid-April (dare we say it?) Epic Day! 

Van Emden Henson

Reporter at Large

Ramy said it would be good...

Of course, he's said that before.

Starting a couple days ago, Ramy noted that Tuesday (April 22nd) was likely to be a good post frontal day, and lobbied for a bunch of glider  pilots to fly and for a tow pilot to drag the gliders aloft.

Then Monday night, he changed his tune from "probably a good day" to "probably a great day."

So I took the day off to go flying in 1YC. Ramy was there in TG. Larry and Stuart came out to fly 81C. Jim (?) and Jennifer, down from Minden, came out in PW, their DG 800 motor glider.

I warned Ramy that if the day crapped out the stones were dry and I wouldn't miss... and early on it looked pretty questionable, with pretty clear skies and lots of wind on the ground at Byron. I was skeptical, but Ramy kept reassuring me that it was going to get better and better.

So we all rigged our gliders, and got ready to fly.

Ramy's Report

As usual, Ramy launched first in TG. He spotted just the tiniest whiff of a cloud, got under it, dropped off tow, and promptly vanished into the stratosphere. Here is his report:

Epic day today, even better than forecast, with bases above 7K, and up to 9K further north, accessible from pattern tows. It does not get any better than that at Byron, so too bad only few managed to shift things around their schedule to enjoy such an epic day. I'll let other tell their stories. I flew nearly 600km, SE to Turlock then NW along the Sierra foothills to north of Sutter Buttes via Sacramento and back to Byron via the western sierra foothills again.

Ramy over Sacramento

His Facebook post included this description:

Finally the flight I needed! Epic valley day with bases up to 9K. Went SE to Turlock, NW via Sacramento to 13 miles north of Sutter Buttes, back SE to the Sierra foothills by Camanche Reservoir area, and back to Byron.


Ramy's flight on OLC:
http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?dsId=3567781

Here is a view of Ramy's flight:

 Buzz, after looking at Ramy's trace, had this to say:

Awesome!!!   Indeed a 500km valley day out of Byron fits the definition of EPIC!!   Years go by with[out] that happening.

Ramy over Sutter Buttes

 Van's Report

Ramy was followed by Jim and Jennifer in PW, who also saw a tiny cloud and did a similar vanishing act.  Larry and Stuart helped me launch next in 1YC, and then they launched in 81C.

Paul towed me up, flying 76W, and he spotted a cloud over Brushy Peak and suggested we head that way. Before we got there I spotted my own "tiny whiff of a cloud" ahead, and when I saw 76W go up, and I went up a few seconds later and the boost lasted long enough, I released at 3000 feet and started my climb, which would prove to be the first of many on the day.

That first climb got me to 4100 feet, and two more thermals took me to 6700 feet, which is roughly where I spent most of the flight.

Van's house, from about 6000 feet.

I didn't really go anywhere, never straying far from C83. I went out toward Mt. Diablo, down over my house in northeast Livermore, out to Funny Farm, down to Mountain House, and then criss-crossed the area between those points several times.

There was a lot of Cu, in nicely spaced puffs. Most of the clouds were fed by thermals, with the best stuff coming under the wispy beginnings of the cloud. The thermals were to the north of the cloud early (wind at Byron was right down 30 at the time), but later in the day the thermals were better west of the cloud, as the winds aloft backed around to more westerly.

Much of the afternoon the clouds were streeting, and I could cruise along under them, climbing slightly. I also found "sink streets" between the cloud streets, definitely areas to be avoided.

I spent the afternoon practicing finding and centering thermals, working streets, and working on "speed to fly."  Which brings me to:

 

Flaps 

 

1YC has flaps. I'm in love with them. I'd never flown a flapped glider before we bought 1YC, and although I feel like I'm just scratching the surface on how to use them, I've become a devotee. Here is what I like about flaps.

When you go into a thermal, you crank in (in our case) +8 flaps, the same amount used for normal landing approach. Stall speed drops (from 38 kts to 33 kts in 1YC) and you can fly noticeably slower, resulting tighter turns for a given bank angle, keeping you closer to the center of the thermal (assuming you can center the thermal, a dicey proposition in my case) and providing greater lift for the airspeed. Of course, you have to remember that at 60 degrees of bank the 33 kts stall speed is now 46 kts - but without the flaps it would be 54 kts!  Cool!

When I was a kid, I was a ski racer. (Don't worry, I'll get back to the point soon.) I loved to point my skis straight down the steepest hill I could find and go like hell! (Broke my leg skiing once early in the day, but I was a kid, and therefore indestructible, and lift tickets were expensive*, so I skied on it the rest of the day.) I loved speed!

Now that I'm an old coot, well, fast isn't so much of an attraction.  When I snowboard (mostly) or ski (rarely) I still go down the steep stuff, but I do it under great control - no speed demon here.  Which brings me to the point. When I fly, I tend to fly too slow. Not (generally) dangerously slow, but when "speed-to-fly" says go fast, I push the stick forward and get my speed up, but then I start subconsciously easing back, and then when I look at the ASI, sure enough, I'm back at or below best L/D. Setting the trim helps, of course, but I still tend to back off.  Something I'm working on.

Enter negative flaps into my life!  Yea!  When I need to go fast, I notch -4 on my flaps, and fast I go. When I need to go still faster, I set the flaps at -7, and I go still faster.  It isn't much different from setting the trim, except for this: setting the trim holds the attitude where you want it to be, and relieves you of the necessity of holding the stick there. But setting the flaps reconfigures the shape of the wing, and makes the airplane want to go the speed you want it to go.  Way cool!

*Author's note: In 1972 I quit skiing in protest. I was protesting the rising cost of lift tickets.  Park City, Utah, had just raised their all day lift ticket price to $6.50 -- yes, I got the decimal in the right place -- and I thought it was too much to pay! In a classic case of "cutting off one's nose to spite one's face," I didn't ski again for 20 years.  But I had been paying $4.40 at Snow Basin and Solitude, and just $2.75 at Brighton. (Of course, there is a good chance that the $6.50 was a larger fraction of my annual income back then than is the $80 I paid for a lift ticket at Copper Mountain two weeks ago...)    

It ended up as my longest flight ever, at four hours and 23 minutes.

I topped out at 7900 feet. Amazingly, this happened while I was working a bunch of small clouds, all with their bases around 6000 feet. Suddenly, in the blue between clouds, I hit a monster thermal. It pegged my vario, so I only know that it was at least +10 knots upward. It took me to 7900 feet, well above the clouds in the area. Although I didn't get quite that high again, I did get several other "monster" thermals in the blue between clouds, thermals that took me well above the clouds.

Here is a look at my OLC trace:

For more detailed information, the link to my OLC trace is
http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?dsId=3567701

Later in the day the winds aloft got stronger, and the thermals got wider apart (but also stronger), and quite turbulent. In between the thermals I often found lengthy stretches of very strong sink (hence my new found love of negative flaps).

And while it isn't the quality of the pics Ramy posts (I don't have the flying skill that Ramy has, to pay attention to the photography; I don't have as good a camera as Ramy's; I don't have Ramy's remote control stick to hold it out the window, and I don't have a pretty a face like Ramy), here's my first foray into Glider Selfies:

Van over Mountain House with Tracy in the distance

Stuart's Report

I never heard from PW or TG the rest of the day, but did encounter Larry and Stuart in 81C. (By the way, OLC has added a cool feature called Meeting Points. If OLC detects two glider tracks in sufficiently close proximity, and I don't know how they define that, it records that fact. Then you can click on the radio button and see on the chart a blue circle showing where the encounter took place.  You can also bring up the other glider's trace. You have to be logged in to OLC to see this feature, though.  According to OLC, 81C and 1YC spent 11 minutes in sufficiently close proximity to count as a "meeting.")

I was only aware of being very close on one occasion. I was making for a thermal and found 81C already working it, a couple hundred feet lower. I tried to be a good citizen, circling in the same direction, and I tried to get 180 degrees across the circle from them. But I never got there, with the result that I think my poor excuse for gaggle flight scared Larry off. He left the thermal, anyway. (Something else for me to work on.)

Stuart had this to say:

And thanks to you Ramy for the weather forecasting. I did 1.5 hours and came down as I didn't feel too well by then. We were passing up lift most of the way down right over the airport. My max was about 6,000 ft during an excursion over towards Livermore and then the reservoir and Funny Farm.

Thanks to Paul and all of you.

Here is the OLC view for Stuart and Larry.  The link is

 http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?flightId=-1938590785

The Cavalry Arrives

But, eventually, all good things must end, and I decided to head back to Byron and land. Actually, I had made that choice twice earlier, once at about 3 hours and once at about half an hour later.  Both times, though, I found just one irresistible thermal to work and stayed aloft. About 4 hours in I realized I had just blasted through two good thermals and two big sinkholes between them without adjusting my flight controls at all, and, moreover, that I didn't really care.  Time to come down, Van!

So I focused my attention on gently gliding down from about 5000 feet, and realized there was so much lift that I was going to have to put out the speed brakes to get down! (Much as Stuart reported.)  

I checked the AWOS and found that the wind was very strong (17, gusting to 25) but pretty much straight down 23, and planned an approach to 23. Recalling to add 1/2 the wind and a bit for the gusts, I approached at a screaming 55 kts (1YC has a normal approach speed of 43 kts) and made a very nice landing.  I had radioed that I would be a few minutes getting clear of the runway, but stopped right at the turnout so it was pretty easy to drag it clear.  Then I began considering how I would get 1YC back to the ramp.  Larry and Stuart had gone home, Paul had long since left, and Ramy, Jim, and Jennifer were still aloft. 

I would have to walk back to 30 to fetch my tail dolly, then either push 1YC by hand, with a wingtip dragging, or borrow Ramy's wing runner (gotta get one of those!), and push it without a wingtip dragging, all the way back to the ramp, in a 17 kt crosswind.  Not a happy prospect either way. 

Then, much to my pleasant surprise, I looked up the taxiway and there was Rolf, coming in a golf cart!  Way to go, Rolf! (We seem to say that a lot, anybody notice?)  He showed up to work on his glider(s) just before Larry left, and was monitoring the radio.  When he heard me calling my approach, he saddled up and game to the rescue.  

So he helped me tow 1YC back to her trailer, and then, nice guy that he is, he stuck around to help me de-rig and put 1YC in the trailer.  What a great guy, that Rolf. I wouldn't have enjoyed de-rigging solo in that wind. 

While we were putting 1YC away, PW returned, followed shortly by Ramy in TG.  Rolf fetched TG from the runway (PW, of course, taxied back in).  

Kudos to all

Thanks to Paul for the great tow.  He is clearly a superior tow pilot, much better than those guys who tow me up and only give me 15 minute sled rides!  Thanks to Rolf for being there to help at the end of the day.  A knight in shining armor! Thanks to Stuart and Larry for helping to launch. And thanks to Ramy for the good forecast and the steady encouragement!

Finally:

Ramy said it would be good.  And boy, was it ever!