Day 4

After three days here at The Florida Ridge, it's kind of like the movie Ground Hog Day, but in a good way. The anxiety of  not knowing what to expect has subsided and I have slipped into a nice little routine. Since I have had a few late nights hacking together another entry for this Blog, I have been sleeping in a little until around 8:00am or so. A little breakfast with my wife and kids at our cabin, and it's off to the flight park. There has been no humidity to speak of since we got here and the days have all been beautiful, especially the mornings. At around 9:00am people begin to trickle into the staging area to assemble gliders and layout their gear. While I am terrible with names, I have gotten to know at least a little bit about most of the pilots here and a great sense of camaraderie has quickly developed among all the teams. All of the C pilots have been logging new personal bests, so each day brings a great sense of optimism fueled by the previous days achievements.

Steve Larson diagrams a thermal for us and teaches thermaling strategy to eager students..

Today was my turn to represent our team in the task committee with Davis Straub. Each day Davis has invited the days task committee into his 5th wheel trailer to review the days weather forecast and discuss options for the days task. Davis has an awesome set-up to say the least. As he walks us through the days proposed task, he has the large LCD TV hooked to his laptop, so we can all follow the thought process in developing a safe and hopefully achievable task. Weather conditions for the day looked promising, with winds switching to northwest at 8-10 mph. Cloudbase was foretasted to be around 5000ft with lift in the 4-600 FPM range. We settled on a 28.3 mile task for the day with two waypoints to tag on the way to goal. With the middle section of the task having a fair amount of crosswind to contend with, this again seemed like a pretty ambitious task for the C pilots, especially with the crosswind component. When asked what we thought about the task, I actually wanted to explore shortening the crosswind leg and lengthening the downwind portion of the task, but it was quickly pointed out that with the waypoints available and the combination of landing options, the proposed route would be a better alternative.

Pilots crowd around to watch Davis review the weather forecast and the days task on his TV. 

A Google Earth view of the Day 4 task.

Due to some folks being slow to prepare for launch and the possibility of thunderstorms late in the day, the launch window for the days task was shortened to one hour and moved to 1:30. This means that there is a one hour window to get all the pilots launched and not much time for a relight if you sink out at the park. Luckily our team, Below Me, was scheduled to launch first today. We decided to launch Steve first, so that he could try to get established in a thermal and mark it for the rest of our team. I launched second with the rest of the team falling in right behind. I got a nice tow and right off release was able to start turning in a steady 2-300 fpm up. As the rest of our team joined me in the air, they all scrambled to get established in a thermal. On previous days we have had issues with one or more of our team members radio not working well, but today we had good communication and everyone was getting established in decent lift pretty quickly. After working the lift around the park to around 3500' we start to look at our next climb. Steve gives the command to head for the next good looking cloud and our team is off together for the first day.

Gliders staged and ready for the launch window to open.

The first waypoint was a juice plant approximately 6 1/2 miles west of the flight park . As we work our way west, Steve is like our shepherd, getting regular updates from us on lift conditions and pointing us in the right direction. Since Steve is flying a rigid wing glider that has much higher performance than the flexwings we are flying, he is able to quickly top out in lift and move forward to scout the next nice climb. As we make our way toward the juice plant, our team starts to drift apart and before long, I have lost a visual on everyone else, so I decide to move forward and tag the first waypoint. As I go on glide to catch this first waypoint, I am tracking slightly across and up wind and dropping altitude pretty fast. I started my glide at around 3800' and by the time I reach the juice plant, I am just north of 2000' AGL. For the more experienced pilots, this may not be a big deal, but with as much ground as I needed to cover to hit the next waypoint, I am eager to catch another climb. As I cross the road in front of the juice plant, I can feel the instability in the air and know that I am close to something. When I am directly above the intersection at the juice plant, my instrument sings me the waypoint song and I head crosswind back through the instability that I had just felt. One of things that I have learned in flying with Steve, is to fly through the first bit of lift to survey the strength and size of the thermal. At around 1800' AGL, my vario starts showing 4-600' up and I lock in with a nice high bank turn. It is truly an amazing feeling to core a thermal when you are dialed in to the core. As the vario whines away, I watch the shadow of my glider track along the ground, leaving the juice factory behind. As I enjoy the climb, I can feel that my flying has become more relaxed and efficient in just the last three days of flying. As I drift along, I am listening to the the radio chatter between my team mates. Just downwind of me I can see that Steve has joined back up with John and they are working something that looks like a boomer.  The three of us converge at the core of a solid 800-1000 FPM up. I will use my second movie reference of this post to help illustrate what this is like for you non-pilots that may be reading this. If you have seen the original Wizard of OZ..... remember the scene in the beginning when the house is spiraling up in the tornado and Dorthy looks out the window to see the guys rowing the boat and the wicked witch on the bicycle, well that's kind of what it's like. Instead of a cow circling through the air with you, it's your buddy cranking and banking with you skyward. Just the day before was the first time I had been able to thermal with anyone else and now the three of us are sharing a great climb. Two other pilots see us climbing in strong lift and are on glide to join us in this elevator. When we are about 1000' below cloud base, Steve and John head off to grab the next climb. Although we are on the crosswind leg of our task, I don't feel like I am drifting too far downwind to catch the next way point, so I stay with this one until I hit cloud base at 6200'. At this point, I see a little street of lift in front of me, so I slide out of  the thermal that I am in to crab back crosswind to set myself up for another climb that will hopefully take me up wind of the next waypoint. For the next couple miles, I bounce around from cloud to cloud trying to find something good. By the time the airstrip at the second waypoint is in sight, I am starting to get low and nothing near the waypoint looks good. The whole area is shading in fast. Just down wind of the waypoint, Steve alerts me that he is in 1000 FPM up and to come dial into it. Before I get to Steve, I find some nice 600 up and climb back up to 4200'. At this point, I can take the short glide up/crosswind and tag the second waypoint. When I join back up with Steve, he is still enjoying a quick climb in strong lift. I am now a couple thousand feet below Steve and can't seem to get into what he has. I would find decent lift and get spit out. As soon as I am out of the lift I go back into my search pattern trying to find the core of the lift that I know is close, but I can't seem to find it. Steve is now way above me and I am giving up everything that I gain in lift, each time I get tossed out. I know that I am on the fringe of the core, so I start turning the other direction. I hit punchy 600 up and keep flying through it opening my circle pattern into an oval, hoping to take a bite of the core. As I exit the 600 up that I had been in I fly through some really ratty lifting air and BAM! My glider feels like it hits a wall. I pull in and feel my glider being sucked into the core. Here we go, the vario hits the high note and I go a little rigid as I feel the upward acceleration. I pitch the glider into a left hand turn and watch the ground peel away.Before I know it, I have Steve back in site and we are dancing together just below cloudbase. Above 5000' there seems to be lift everywhere, so we take a downwind heading and push forward to goal. As goal comes into sight, I can see that Austin is already there and breaking down, with Steve Pearson working retrieve. Chris, one of the pilots from the Cloudbase team, joins Steve and I in the air above goal. Steve and I decide that rather than pushing on downwind, we will call it a day and join Austin on the ground at goal and hopefully share a ride back. Steve is a little lower than me, so I figure I will watch him and Chris land. As we circle around at 3000', there is light lift everywhere. Steve is circling to get out of lift and I am watching him slowly gain altitude until he is back and  level with me. Since I am flying a single surface glider, I know that I can stuff the bar and dump some altitude quickly with some slipping turns, but I kind of wanted to watch them land from the air. While Steve is working hard to get down with his rigid glider, I unzip my harness to let my knees hang out and open my visor. With my forearms resting on the bar, I make big lazy circles around the adjacent field  and I am still going up in a smooth 2-300 FPM everywhere. I have to laugh, as there have been so many times that I have groveled and scraped to find any lift and now while I boat around this pasture in the middle of nowhere, soaring is literally effortless. As Chris and Steve finally make their way to the ground with nice landings, it's time for me to get serious about landing and breaking down my gear. As I am up wind of the landing zone, I stuff the bar for a down wind leg, seeing how fast I can get my little freedom going without balling up. As I near the end of my down wind leg, I glance at my insturment to see that I am clipping along at 53 mph. As I ease the bar out and bring it back to trim, I roll into a series of slipping turns that have me dumping lots of altitude. At around 300 ft, I am back in a downwind, base and final that leaves me with a nice round out and landing with my new flying buddies at goal.

Steve and Chris breaking down at goal.

We are all smiles as we shed our harnesses and recap the highlights of yet another great day of flying. After breaking down and extracting all of our gear from the field, we stage it next to the dirt road and take the time to get to know each other a little better. Nobody is worried about how long it will take for our retrieval; as we are content to enjoy a beautiful Florida evening, lounging in the grass with our gear as we share in the satisfaction of pushing ourselves in this truly amazing pursuit of hang gliding. It's just icing on the cake that I get retrieved again by my beautiful wife.

Day 4 was good to me with two new personal bests, longest flight duration
 at 2:46 and longest XC flight at 28 miles.