From Minden with Silver
The Minden summer 2012 was a great overall success. Unusually wet weather throughout the season provided cloud markers for soaring frequently even locally on the Pine Nuts. Furthermore, we all witnessed continued growth of the local FBO, Soaring NV, which moved its operation into a new and comfortable building, expanded from two to four tow-planes since last summer, and hired Russell Holtz as the chief instructor. I flew on few weekend days in July and second half of August through Labor Day, and achieved my personal goal of getting the flights for the silver badge by the end of the summer.
At the end of August I was still left with the Silver Distance leg to accomplish. I got my chance on a Labor Day Sunday. I hoped for one of those days that would take me either north towards Air Sailing, or south towards Mt. Patterson or Mono Lake, the areas I got comfortable with earlier in the summer while flying dual on few occasions with Mike S. The soaring forecast was good, but mostly blue and cloudless. As the days get colder late in the summer, the soaring starts later and later in the day as it takes more time to reach the trigger temperature. So I decided to go for a standard Silver Distance task out of Minden, which encompasses the >51km leg between Rawe Peak on the north end of Pine Nuts, and Topaz International on the south. Start has been suggested to be someplace in the valley, “Sunrise” waypoint. Kind folks from Soaring NV helped me enter the turnpoints into the Cambridge logger and declare the task. It looked like I am all ready. Alas, bad luck with flight loggers struck again, and once I got off tow I lost all my navigational tools. My flight computer with the moving map went dead. In addition, due to multiple human errors (some of them mine) the GPS-NAV computer did not cycle through turn-points even though the task was loaded. Between figuring out the GPS-NAV and struggling to thermal low around the valley, I decided to go with the task as planned, ignore the GPS-NAV and navigate by eye as much as I can and have fun with the flight. I spent over 40 minutes looking around the valley and lower hills for the way to get high enough to get to the Pine Nuts. Once on the ridge, things were straightforward: I proceeded to its northern edge and Rawe Peak, turned tightly around Rawe Peak at about 13.600ft, and proceeded to my next turn-point of Topaz International. Also known as the Flying Mouse Strip, Topaz International is a little dusty strip in the valley southeast of Minden and off of the southern edge of Pine Nuts. Reaching Topaz turn-point in the valley means flying through a lot of sink. Thus, it was important to find a thermal while still on the Pine Nuts and get as high as possible before hopping to Topaz international. Also, it was important to preserve enough altitude on the way back from Topaz and into the hills in order to stay in the reasonable lift band. Having said all that, I ended up scratching my way up over the hills and back to Minden anyway. Both the Rawe Peak and Topaz turnpoints were made within 1km radius, which is not all that easy to do by eye from high altitude. Total distance to be claimed is about 116km, in about 2.5 hours.
Many thanks to Mike Schneider for introducing me back to Minden area early in the summer, and for few long dual flights far north and south of Minden, which got me acquainted with good soaring in the inhospitable Sierra terrain and few good landout options. Soaring NV provided a very comprehensive support for their guest pilots, not just tows.
Since I flew KP a lot this summer, I felt obligated to help Mike S haul the glider back this past weekend. As it turns out, the soaring weather was exceptional for early Fall. Saturday would have been a nice day to attempt a gold distance if it wasn’t for the late start in the day. My last flight of the season was dual with Mike S, almost all the way to Tioga Pass in Yosemite, abeam Mono Lake, then back over Dayton airport, and finally to Minden, about 300km in 3.5 hours. Ha! After that, we put nice new red fenders on KP trailer, exchanged lots of hugs and handshakes with all the nice people in Soaring NV who also helped us put the glider in the trailer, and took KP home for some fall and winter excitement at Byron.
Maja
-- Maja Djurisic Stanford University Research Associate, Shatz Lab James H Clark Center 318 Campus Dr, W150 Stanford, CA, 94305 lab phone: 1 650 498 1970 e-mail: djurisic@stanford.edu
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