I went to Truckee Friday and flew four flights with Larry in 81C, once on Friday and thrice on Saturday. Larry and Maya were up when I arrived, so I waited for them to return; once they arrived, I gave Larry a short break while I did a preflight on 81C. Since I hadn't used the oxygen system before, Larry gave me a briefing on it before the takeoff.
My takeoff was very smooth, but I hadn't flown in a couple weeks, so I was bouncing around behind the towplane a bit more than I'd like, and wasn't as coordinated as I should have been. After a while that settled down, though. Larry said his flight with Maya was characterized by lots of lift, so we figured we'd get off in the first good thermal we hit, and that's what we did. Whereupon I immediately enhanced my budding reputation as an accomplished sink-finder. I turned right out of the nice thermal into big sink, and went round and round, looking for that thermal, but it had evidently vanished! We finally got low enough that Larry ordered a return to the airport. I turned back toward KTRK and about a minute later blissfully hit a thermal - and what a thermal it was! Quite strong (frequently pegging the vario), and, although not all that well formed and not all that easy to get or keep centered, it lasted and lasted. When we stopped circling just below cloudbase, we had ridden that thermal upwards over 7,000 feet. At over 14,000 feet, the whole vista of Lake Tahoe, the Sierras and the foothills to the west, Reno, Carson city, and Minden to the east was spread out from horizon to horizon. Man, that was worth the work of the climb!
We headed up past Verdi and northeastward, past Reno-Stead and just west of Air Sailing, and, having dropped below the 18:1 cone from Truckee, so Stead was now our new "home airport," started poking about for a thermal that would take us back over the hills to Truckee. This turned out to be a great lesson in finding thermals under clouds - Larry had me exploring the likely locations under the sunny edge of the cloud, poking under the darkest spot, looking for building versus dissipating cloud...
We caught a good thermal and then followed a nice line of clouds back down over Mt. Rose and on down the east escarpment of the Sierras toward Carson City, before turning back toward the Truckee valley. The landing was pretty interesting: there was an 11 kt wind out of 300; Larry told me I could use 29 or take 19 for practice on crosswind landing technique, and I chose the latter. It was pretty uneventful, except when we slowed down to take the left turnout the wind caught the tail and started us on a right turn! We managed to straighten out and make the second turnout, which was a right-hand turnout. Kind of fun!
All told we were up about 2.5 hours and covered 191 km before returning to Truckee.
The track of the flight is posted on the OLC site: http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?dsId=2759548
Here are two short videos I took during the flight with my cell phone. Not great quality, but nicely in the "I was there" genre of videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2tEwHHBLfM&feature=youtu.be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTvEIvEJ-Tw&feature=youtu.be
The next morning Larry and I started with two patterns, and then took a longer flight before Mang was due to fly. It started remarkably like the previous day: releasing in a good thermal and immediately turning out of it into massive sink! Once again I struggled to find lift until Larry said we needed to turn back to the airport, and again I stumbled on some lift. Unlike Friday, though, this was NOT a good, strong thermal. It was wimpy and unreliable, and I spent a long time just gaining a couple hundred feet back to the tow release altitude, and then a much longer time struggling up to a comfortable altitude, where we finally found strong lift that carried us up to 14,000 feet. Again we chased a cloud line, some good, some not so good, until we were south of Carson City and approaching Minden. Then Larry had me fly across Lake Tahoe, working on flying a coordinated, constant speed, straight path, using as little control input as possible. That was a great exercise! Once we got across, we went over to Squaw Valley, where we hit very strong thermals and attained our max altitude of just over 15,500 feet. Larry startled me (after two rides of incessantly reminding me of Speed To Fly and speeding up in sink, slowing in lift) by telling me to fly fast through the lift - when I asked why he pointed out that this time speed-to-fly was to keep from being sucked up into the clouds! Hmm... should've thought of that myself! About that time, west of Squaw Valley, we realized that Mang was due for the plane in about fifteen minutes, and with plenty of altitude, Larry had me check out what a high-speed run felt like in the Grob - he instructed me to fly straight to KTRK at 90 knots, just at the upper limit of the green arc. The wind is pretty loud (and pretty cold through the vent) in that configuration.
We got back and let Mang and Stefanie have the plane, and when they got back we all took it apart. Maya was there to help - she flew with Larry before I did on Friday, and on Saturday caught a ride with Sergio and flew all around the lake. Sounded like quite an adventure, but we'll have to see if she wants to report on it!
The track from my Saturday flight is:
http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?dsId=2760496
but sorry, no crappy videos for this flight.
All in all, a terrific weekend!
Van
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