Serendipitous Discovery

The search for Steve Fossett, who is presumed to have crashed somewhere in the Sierra Nevadas, has not yet located the wreck of his plane, but it has found eight other unknown wrecks.

It reminds me my junior-high vice-principal, who ordered a student's locker searched after being told he had brought a gun to school. They didn't find a gun, but they did find a knife, a chain, and a hashpipe.

-- Johan Larson

West Wind Jet Stopped By Sunday

Buzzard readers might want to know that West Wind pilot Wilbur dropped in for a social call to NCSA clubhouse this AM.

He showed me his jet and said it was really very easy to fly.

Ask Shannon how his landing was...

-- Monique Weil

Best ever flight from Byron: 115mile triangle, 13,500'

Saturday (August 4th) was a one in a million flight - or so it seemed - thanks to
Jack Glendenning's Blipmaps with the RASP maps for Byron configured by
Dmitry Chichkov.

And thanks to Ramy who asked to share Grob FB for a flight in the
Diablo Range to check out those unbelievable Blipmaps forecasts.
I was not the Byron duty instructor so was free to fly and no one else
requested the Grob, so I found myself at the right place at the right time.

We launched at 2:20 and Dave Stroh towed us to the Diablo Range, release
3 (?) then easily climbed from one thermal to another (not infrequently
10 knot average) to 13,500'. We had an oxygen tank leak so I did not want to
climb any higher; I began to get a slight headache--my initial hypoxic
symptom.

There were some clouds in the morning to indicate the convergence but
none during the flight--there was haze however, which indicated the
convergence zone.
We turned over Pacheco Pass (highway 152), then Ramy suggested we detour
to go over Mt Hamilton (Lick Observatory) which we did, before heading straight
to Mt Diablo. We found a weak wave near the Livermore valley, which
gave us zero sink to Mt Diablo. Total distance covered from release
was 184 KM. Open spoilers were necessary to head for Byron as there was
good lift all over the Byron area. Peter Wilson, the Byron Field
Manager was kept busy all day and will report separately after he has
rested a bit.

Ramy was unused to not having an audio vario or any electric vario (or
PDA or flight computer) just a good mechanical vario that FB has.
This was "Back to Basics" for Ramy. We also had no transponder so I did
all the communicating with ATC--Norcal Approach--We were transferred
to 5 different controller sectors during this 3.4 hour flight. The
first controller was initially skeptical of our presence in this busy
airspace, often referred to as "Tiger Country" by glider pilots, without
a transponder. He asked what instruments we had; "A compass.", was my
reply". Without too much trouble however, he was able to paint our
primary target and all the subsequent controllers also easily tracked
our course. The fact that we were able to locate most of the targets
(mostly 737s) pointed out to us helped smooth out the interchanges. I
think the controllers were a little awed by our climbs--as we were
also. Once a controller told an airliner that we were a
"motorglider", and I didn't contradict him. We were frequently asked for
our altitude and I could sense the disbelief in the pause that followed
our reports of continued climb. The only reprimand I got was when I
mispoke--and said we had the 737 three-mile "dead ahead" (I was
probably a little hypoxic and couln't think to say: "twelve o'clock" -
Controller told me never to say "dead" on the air.) Only once were we
asked to change course and we were given two options: to turn north or
south. Ramy chose "south" and our responsiveness to their requests was
appreciated.

What a joy this flight was for me! Ramy said he had never flown higher
than about 10,000' in the Diablo Range before.

Keep checking those RASP Blip maps--who knows what we missed before
this creation.
I hope this flight will spur other club members to explore the Diablo
range when good lift is predicted.

-- Monique Weil

House of Balsa

I've just completed a side project 2 meter R/C glider that was started on a rainy winter night some months back. Sometimes you just have to take a break and let your creative juices flow. I always wanted a model glider with spoilers so midway through the wing build I decided to steal a few ideas off the web. My cable operated spoilers work quite well. I have a number of flights on it now, mostly at the East Bay Radio Controllers field off of a Highstart(bungee) type launch. That gets me about 200 feet or so. Caught some nice thermals coming up off the dark runway that helped sustain my flights.

During this time I also dug my 25 year old Bridi trainer out of my parents' attic and completely rebuilt/recovered it. Flew it for the first time since 1983 this weekend. It was like visiting an old friend. It flew just like I remembered(maybe even better), except my teenage knees werent knocking this time. Life always seems to bring us full circle, just enjoy those moments of yesteryear as they pass by.

--Tony Derrer

A Nice Day at Soar Truckee

Our flight, July 5: Mike Mayo launched from Truckee about 1:30 carrying us
along in NCSA's Grob 103 N3981C for his WINGS flight. He got off tow at 8400', and he took us to over 16,000' in less than 20 minutes north of Truckee. We then
flew east over the ridge but turned around past Spooner Lake over Highway
50—Mike noted virga ahead. Seems the earlier launches made it past
that area before our arrival.

Returning to the Truckee Valley around 10,000', Mike again brought us up
past 16,000' and
he headed us northwest, running a nice cloud street passing over Sierraville
then Nervino and abeam Quincy almost to Susanville.
Good fun. We could see the cloud street extending up beyond
Ravendale and parts further northwest. Alas, we turned home so I could land
and head home, only to note
that the fun cloud street we had flown in on had begun to overdevelop with
virga. We made our way home via a more northeasterly route from
near Herlong through what
Mike noted as a possible convergence line between the east winds aloft and
what had grown into a squall line of virga to the west. We observed a
single
lightning strike along the path that we had earlier taken and Air Sailing
Gliderport to the northeast.

It sure was fun flying along below 18,000' at 80 to 90 knots indicated with
4 to 6 up and Stead made. We could see Lake Tahoe to the near right and
Pyramid Lake to the left all in their full length with just a turn of our
heads. Beautiful.

We arrived over Truckee at 12,000' and enjoyed the intentional glide down.
As we looked up at the OD in the sky, we both smiled, enjoying our 4 hour
flight. We had
adjusted our route according to the weather for the day, flown always within
glide distance of a paved runway, and landed safely having enjoyed beautiful
country sights along the way.

Mike M. and Dave C.

2003 Air Sailing Cross Country Camp

Mike Oshell, Buzz Graves and I all attended the Air Sailing X-C camp this year. I highly recommend this camp to NCSA’ers. It is a lot of fun and really gives a boost to your soaring skills. It is held at Air Sailing, which is about 45 minutes north of Reno, NV, in a pretty isolated area called Palomino Valley, very near Pyramid Lake. The camp is 5-1/2 days in length. You arrive Sunday evening and leave Friday evening. The "tuition" was $300; lodging is $30-$60 depending on your choice of accommodation. Tows average $35 each.

The camp is organized similar to conferences I have attended. Each day, lectures start at 8:00am sharp and go through 11:30. Then there is a pilot’s meeting and weather briefing, following by gridding the gliders. All afternoon is spent flying with a “lead pilot” (more on this later). You return for dinner, then there are usually evening sessions from about 7:30pm to 9:30pm. So for 5 days, it is flat out soaring and sleeping, with a little food thrown in. After 5 days I have to say I was exhausted, but very pleasantly exhausted. There were 15 attendees, coming from as far as Michigan, Wisconsin, and Colorado.

This year's camp was organized by Chad Moore and David Prather. They did a super job and really worked hard to put on a professional camp. Both Chad and David know a lot about soaring, and Chad is something of an expert on meteorology. There are a lot of varied topics in the camp, but the core of the camp is learning how to do the math surrounding cross country soaring and then applying these rules it in a controlled environment, where you feel comfortable "pushing the envelope" a bit. Attendees are separated into groups of 2-3 which have about the same skill level and glider performance. This small group then flies together with a "lead pilot." Our lead pilot was NCSA member Dick Horn, who did a great job of shepherding us around. Especially on a blue day, it really helps to have a more experienced pilot along judging the safety of the situation, and maybe even marking a thermal for you. Most low-time pilots are (rightly) pretty conservative about glide angle. You have to get used to being an honest 18:1 away from pattern altitude. This can be a bit unnerving 10nm out. It really helps to have someone like Dick Horn along to double-check your assessment. Also, 3 ships working together have a much better chance of finding a thermal than one pilot in isolation.

Gradually, you begin to feel more comfortable being a ways out from the airport. Finally, you suck it up and make the jump to flying local at the next airport, and then the next, and so on. Since airports in the Nevada basin are spaced about 20 miles apart, this means having to get to 12,000 feet to make the hop to the next airport. Since Air Sailing is a lot easier than Truckee to get back to at the end of the day, there is a lot less pucker about a $150 retrieve or a fire drill with the glider trailer. So, in a lot of ways, the XC camp lowers a lot of the barriers which keep pilots like me flying local and gives you a chance to step out.

Another big learning experience, at least for me, was dealing with the airport topology. The 2 runways are mostly dirt and are significantly up/down hill (!?) I had never landed on dirt before, never took off with a serious tail wind, and never landed uphill or downhill. Also, I had never really flown any serious ridge before. The first day, it looked like tow pilot Charlie Hayes wanted to run me into the side of the Dogskins Mountains, so I figured my time for ridge flying had just arrived.

If you do end up going to the XC camp or the companion Thermaling Camp (usually organized by our own Rolf Peterson) here’s a little check list of things to consider.

• Sort out how you’re going to get the glider there and back. This means either disassembling and towing (traditional), or getting an aero tow in from Truckee (and maybe back, too.)
  
• Bring a warm sleeping bag. It regularly got down to 32F when I was there.
  
• Air Sailing is at the end of 5 miles of dirt road. Leave the Ferrari home.
  
• Air Sailing is pretty isolated. You’re either going to be doing a fair amount of driving "commuting" into the Reno/Sparks suburbs for food, or you have to plan ahead with cooler and camp stove.
  
• Be prepared to devote 5 solid days to nothing but soaring.
  

Personally, I can’t think of a better way to spend a week.

--Bill Brown

Kemp in Wave

Kemp had a great wave flight out of Minden in January, and he has told us all about it on his blog. Click on the little pictures to see the full-sized ones. There's video, too.

-- Johan Larson