Ending

After 12 years of soaring, I have decided to stop, at least for now. If circumstances change, maybe I’ll return, but not in the foreseeable future. I probably owe an explanation to my readers and friends in aviation, so here goes.

No, I haven’t had a bad experience that has put me off flying, nor am I afraid to fly, nor am I having any health issues that make me unfit to fly. It’s pretty simple: soaring is a lot of work, and lately it’s become much less convenient to fly in southern California, and I’ve accomplished all of my mid-range goals. To go any further would involve a lot more time and expense and effort, and it has simply reached the point that the enjoyment is not worth the effort anymore.

I’ve achieved my goals

In 12 years, here’s some of what I’ve accomplished:

• 328 flights totaling 169 hours. Half the time was in Blanik L13’s, 1/4 in PW5, 1/4 in Grob 103’s.
• Flown from eight locations in three states.
• Flown in six models of glider: Blanik L13 (half my flights), PW5 (one quarter), Grob 103 (one quarter; three varieties), Krosno (two flights), PW6 (one flight), Schweitzer 2-33 (two flights).
• Achieved my Silver badge: 5-hour flight, cross-country flight (31 miles required, I flew 75 miles), altitude gain (3,281' required, I gained 5,700’).
• Two landouts, both planned: one on a road and one on a dirt airstrip.
• Aerotow, autotow, and winch launching.
• A few cross-country flights, including two in the Dust Devil Dash contests.
• 28 passenger flights, six of them strangers.
• Learned to soar in many types of lift: thermal, convergence, shear line, anabatic, ridge, mountain wave.
• Mountain wave flight to 17,000 feet.
• Flown in rain, hail, and a dust devil.
• Gained 9,100 feet in one flight. Dang, that’s nearly Diamond altitude!
• Passed my written tests for Commercial and Instructor ratings. I was two days away from taking my practical tests when Hemet shut us out.
• Conducted ground school classes.
• Conducted student flights (not loggable).
• 321 blog posts.
• Air-to-air photography.
• Solo spins in two models.
• Flown with hawks, vultures, seagulls, crows, and hang gliders. I always hoped to meet an eagle, but never did.
• Helped promote soaring at air shows and model aircraft conventions.
• I’ve never had an unplanned landout. Maybe that means I’m too cautious, but it also means I exercised good planning and judgment.
• Properly handled some near-emergency situations: real rope breaks on aerotow, autotow and winch launches; cloud gaps closing during wave flight, winch engine failure, blocked runways on landing, landing on alternate taxiway due to high winds, collapsed gear on landing.

Soaring has become much less convenient

We lost the ability to fly at Hemet several years ago. Lake Elsinore, the other gliderport near my home, is dusty, run-down, constricted, and I have never had a great soaring day there. Others have, but I’ve never enjoyed it much. Crystalaire is a fantastic place to fly - great facilities, and lots of interesting and challenging opportunities for mountain flying. Read some of my posts, and you’ll see why I like it so much. But… it's an hour and 20 minutes each way, there are usually no other club members there to help share the work, so if the flying is brief, sometimes it’s a whole day gone for a half-hour flight, and that’s just too much.

For the last couple of years I was president of a declining club, and then in charge of merging our club into another. It’s been a lot of work with not a lot of flying.

Now Lake Elsinore is in danger of closing down within the next 6-12 months. Or so they say. I’ve been hearing that for the last 5 years, so who knows. Some folks are optimistic that they will resume flying at Hemet, but from what I’m hearing, little has changed with the County of Riverside. Though some in soaring think they are making progress, to me it appears they are still being stonewalled, and I don’t see Hemet being a good situation any time soon.

Advancing to the next level would cost much more in time and money

I don’t own my own ship, and arranging for cross-country flying in club ships is complicated. Getting into frequent cross-country soaring would require buying a ship and basing it at Crystalaire or Tehachapi. Doing it safely requires ground trips to check out landing spots (I did that before my Dust Devil Dash flights). It requires reciprocal arrangements with other pilots for possible retrieves. As I’ve said, Crystalaire is kind of at my distance limit for same-day flying. The soaring from Tehachapi is wonderful, but it requires a whole weekend.

I’ve done about all I can in local flying. I can’t commit the time and money to XC. Instructing was attractive within my previous club, with Blanik L13’s. Instructing at Elsinore in a 2-33 is not attractive, and I don’t see a thriving club environment at Hemet occurring any time soon. All things considered, I’ve decided it’s time to move on.

On the plus side

Learning to fly has been a great experience. I learned a lot about many topics:

• Flying (obviously).
• Aircraft - this is a very hands-on kind of flying. I now know what all those thingy’s do on an airliner, and I thoroughly understand those numbers on the wall inside a C-141.
• Weather - wow. You can read in my blog posts how I learned to analyze the ups and downs of the atmosphere we fly in. I wrote extensively about one of my best and most interesting flights in this post It’s Complicated, including pictures and diagrams. I’ll always look at the clouds and think about how I would fly them.
• Risk management. Flying for fun safely requires making wise decisions - every time. For example, I remember pulling a Blanik off the runway because something in the cloud pattern told me a thunderstorm was approaching.
• Aviation politics and business. I learned some very ugly things about local and state governments and politicians. The glimpses I got into the FAA were generally all positive.
• Discipline. Flight training involved some early mornings, some cold and wet days, some blisteringly hot days on the runway and in the greenhouse cockpit of a Blanik. I improved my health and fitness and diet, and reduced my use of medications. I basically gave up watching television when I studied for my written and practical tests.

If you’re thinking of learning to fly, may I suggest that you will learn a lot about yourself. I learned that I could do this! Taking another human up in an airplane and safely back down - and showing them a good time and making them want to do it again - is a huge responsibility. I learned to face fear: first the all-knowing Flight Instructor, who is simultaneously your best teacher and your harshest critic; the all-powerful FAA Inspector, who grills you for hours in words and in the air; the fear of actually screwing up on your own. I must say that putting a glider into a spin with no instructor behind me was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done - and one of my proudest accomplishments. Very little in everyday life scares me anymore, after learning I could face that fear.

I hope new soaring pilots will continue to find and read my blog, and gain some knowledge and inspiration from what I have written. I don’t know that I will write any more here, but if anyone writes comments I’ll certainly see them and respond.

Thanks for reading this blog over the past several years, and thanks for the encouragement along the way. I hope everyone who wants to soar finds a good situation in which they can have a great experience.

Back in the (small) saddle

Due to the transition into the new club, I had not flown the PW5 since June. First I needed to get checked out in the club's "A1" level ship, the Krosno. Then I needed a ground checkout with an instructor to be able to fly the "A2" level (single-seat) gliders. That was more of a formality, since I am very familiar with the PW5 and wrote up a document about it for the other club members. After getting the signoff, getting a free weekend, and taking care of a parachute repack, I was finally ready to fly this week.

The weather looked OK for Friday: a relatively clear day between the passing of a minor front and then the arrival of Santa Ana winds. The forecast was for northeast winds, which aren't really good for either thermal flying or wave lift at this location, but it looked like ridge soaring might develop.

As it turned out, the winds were very light and variable all day, and the early clouds gave way to clear skies and ground temperatures into the high 60's. So thermal activity, though not very strong, was present all over the place. The tow pilot reported that the low hills were working better than the mountains (though one pilot got skunked a while before I flew). Due to needing to do some maintenance in the PW5, I didn't get to take off until 2:00. But the tow pilot was right, and we found decent lift over the golf course not far from the airport. I let off at 2,400' AGL, which is pretty low for me. I've been fooled more than once into letting off low, but this time it worked out well enough. The lift looked to be about 5 knots when I let off, but that was a fluke. The rest of the day I never found more than 3 knots, and often less than that.

The lift wasn't terribly strong, but it was wide enough and consistent enough that it was fairly easy to center. Since it was weak, I worked on staying as coordinated as possible, and finding a bank angle that balanced between turning steeply to center it, and not turning so steep that I needed to speed up and get into the drop-off section of the PW5's polar curve. I really paid close attention to the two varios and the physical sensations, and found that perfectly coordinated flight really helped with the lift rate - the difference between "zero sink" and actually climbing. Flying that carefully in weak lift takes a lot of attention.

I worked a couple thermals up from 5,800' MSL to 7,300' MSL. Nothing to brag about, but I was happy to find enough lift to stay up. I got high enough to try the Second Ridge, but there was nothing working there, and by that time all the cloud markers were gone. I had planned to perhaps do some spins (since I have not done them in a while), but since I had to work hard to gain altitude I was not willing to throw it away so easily. I'll spin another day.

When I was at about 6,000' late in my flight, I spotted another glider maybe 1,000' higher and to the southwest of me, and thought I'd try to follow him up. But I lost him in the sun after a few turns, and could never find him again. I decided it was not wise to fly into his space if I couldn't see him, so I headed back toward the airport and decided to call it a day since the lift was starting to weaken.

I ended up with an hour and fifteen minutes, and a really smooth landing. It was nice to be back in the PW5, and I'm looking forward to the wave season starting up. I need one more check ride in the PW6, and then I'll be able to give rides to friends, and maybe do some dual wave flights with club members.

First flight in PW6

The club has a PW6, the two-seat version of the PW5 I have flown for many years. The club ships are categorized by performance and complexity, and the PW6 is in a higher category than the Krosno I recently got checked out in, so in order to fly it I need to go through another pair of instructor flights. (The Grob 103 that we brought over from OCSA is the same category: two-seat fiberglass ships.)

The design of the two ships is quite similar, but the PW6 is noticeably bigger and taller. The empty weight is 753 lbs compared to 419 lbs. Here are a few differences I noted:

• The trim adjustment uses a different latching mechanism.
• There are no side pockets in either cockpit! No place to stash my handheld radio, so I clipped it to my parachute straps.
• Although it is larger, the front cockpit of the PW6 seemed more crowded. The seat seemed cramped.
• No good place to put a Camelback in the front cockpit. Since we were doing short flights, it was not important, but I'll have to look next time to see if I can hang one somewhere. In the Grob 103, I can fit one next to me, but I don't think that will work here.
• The O2 system is pretty kludgy, hanging a bottle in the rear cockpit under the instrument panel and in front of the control stick. Weird, but I guess it's not in the way. In our PW5, it's mounted on a rear bulkhead behind the pilot's head, out of the way. I thought that was standard or built-in, but now I see there's no mention of it in the PW5 manual, so it must be an add-on.
• There's little to no room under the rear seat for emergency gear as there is in the PW5.
• The weight and balance restrictions and calculations are more complex. The PW5 is pretty simple, having only minimum and maximum weight to consider.

So all things considered, it's set up OK for local flights, but it would be rather inconvenient for cross-country flights, though I know people do it.

The flight was pretty normal. It's of course not as sensitive and responsive as the PW5, but flies nicely. It does need quite a bit of rudder pressure in turns, because the rudder is fairly small. The instructor pointed out, and I confirmed, that this particular ship drops the left wing during stalls. It stalls more clearly than the PW5 does. We did not spin it.

It was a nice day, with lots of cumulus clouds early on, but diminishing by the time we flew. You can see from the position of the clouds against the mountains that cloudbase was probably about 8,000 feet. After demonstrating some steep turns and slow flight, I found some nice lift just about under a little cloud. We could have flown around quite a bit, but since it was just a check ride, we came in for a landing after 30 minutes. Others later that day had trouble finding lift, so I guess I got lucky.

The Initial Point and altitude in the standard operating procedures for Crystalaire have changed. The IP is just a little further out than before, but the altitude has been raised quite a bit to 1,600 ft AGL. I guess that was done to simplify the procedure for announcing entry into the airport airspace, but the altitude difference is greater than the distance difference, so I think it has the effect of requiring much more altitude loss during the pattern, requiring more spoiler or perhaps slip in some circumstances. I guess I could measure it on Google Earth, but that's how it seems to me. Other than that, my approach and landing were normal. 

So now I've flown six different models of glider.

A few stats from my logbook

I just completed selling an old Blanik L13 for my club. This particular ship had been crashed, and totaled by the insurance company, but was really not damaged very much. As I wrote the final email to the buyer I mentioned that I would miss the ship, having made 75 flights in it.

That made me wonder just how many flights I have made in which ships. So I ran some stats from my electronic logbook. My flights turned out to be surprisingly evenly distributed. Check this out:

Blanik L13 #1	78
Blanik L13 #2	75
PW5	75
Grob 103	73
Blanik L13 #3	17
Other Grob 103's	5

First flight in Krosno

Those of us from OCSA who have become members of Cypress Soaring (CSI) have to get instructor signoffs to fly each category of Cypress' gliders. The starting point is the Krosno trainer. I'd seen the Krosno many times when both clubs operated at Hemet, but I had never even taken a close look at it until this weekend. Between my schedule and theirs, this Saturday was the first time I was able to book the first of two checkout flights. It was about 102F for much of the afternoon at Lake Elsinore.

I had of course read the flight manual, so I was familiar with most of the features of the glider. OCSA used Blanik L-13's for trainers, so here I'll list a few similarities and differences between the two.

• Both are all-metal ships, with fabric control surfaces.
• Both have forward-swept wings. As I understand it, that places the center of lift very near the center of gravity, so when the instructor gets out for the student's first solo, the flight characteristics hardly change at all.
• The Krosno has a T-tail. Just ask my forehead!
• The Krosno only has instruments in the front cockpit. The instructor has to look around the student's head to see them.
• It has a main wheel, a non-castering tailwheel, and a nose skid. I'd never flown with a nose skid before.
• Its airbrakes are retracted automatically by springs - you have to hold them open.
• Its rudder is medium-sized, which takes more effort.
• Its wheel brake is activated by a handle on a cable, not a lever. It's not very effective, so the nose skid is the main brake.
• This unit has wingtip wheels, so it can do wing-down takeoffs easily (which we did).
• It has bolt-in ballast on the front cockpit floor.
• It has a handle on the tail, which makes ground handling pretty easy.
• It has NO pockets or storage in the front cockpit. Fortunately my little water bottle fits in my cargo-shorts pocket, and my radio clips onto the harness pretty well, though it would not be very secure in turbulence.

The flight went fine. It seemed to me that the ship wanted to yaw to one side, and took a bit of both aileron and rudder to get the yaw string straight. (One of our Blaniks used to fly that way - we called it "right-wing-heavy" and eventually installed a little trim tab to even it out.) Or maybe there was a crosswind on tow that was causing it, but I don't think the wind was from that direction. It was not a big deal, but it meant always flying a little off-center, and it's farirly heavy on the stick.

The still-air sink rate seemed a little high at about 200 feet per minute. I'd have to check my records, but I thought the Blanik was more like 160. We found some broad lift of about 2-3 knots and I was able to climb a few hundred feet. The Krosno seemed pretty easy to control in a medium-banked thermaling turn. Part of learning the quirks of each new ship is finding just how steep and/or slow you can go in a thermal before it wants to stall out of the turn.

I did a couple of straight-ahead stalls, which were quite gentle and easy to recover. It had no tendency to drop a wing, which surprised me since I had had to hold some aileron and rudder in straight flight. Maybe that effect is more pronounced at tow speeds... in any case, it had no tendency to fall off either way in the stall. Then I rolled in and out of some steep turns. It definitely takes a lot of rudder pressure to stay coordinated coming out of turns, which will be something to work on.

The biggest difference for me was using the nose skid for landing. We discussed that I would do a "wheel landing" and then let the nose down to brake to a stop. I put the nose down quite early and then when I realized we had a lot of runway left, it would not come up again. So we stopped quite short. That's another thing I'll have to work on: keeping it balanced on the main wheel longer, until I really want to stop it.

So, one signoff is in the book. One more to go for that level. Then it will be on to the PW-6.

End of an Era: Orange County Soaring Association merging into Cypress Soaring Inc.

As many of you know, Orange County Soaring Association declined significantly in membership and operations after the closure of Hemet to gliding and again after the grounding of the Blanik fleet. I have not written much about this decline in my blog, but frequent readers have probably figured it out by reading between the lines. OCSA has been operating two gliders off and on at Crystalaire for the last several years. In 2013, a decision was made to pursue merging OCSA with another club, in order to preserve the opportunity for OCSA's members and aircraft to fly in southern California. Today we are announcing that OCSA and Cypress Soaring Inc. have signed an agreement which will effectively merge OCSA into CSI, as of August 1, 2014. 

OCSA's Grob 103 and PW5 will transfer to CSI. For the foreseeable future, they will both remain at Crystalaire and will be available for flight by CSI members. Current and former OCSA members may transfer to Cypress. 

OCSA's one viable Blanik L13 and another Blanik fuselage, wings, parts, and trailers are for sale, listed on Wings and Wheels. Contact information is in the advertisements.

As you have probably heard, Krey Field, which had been Cypress' base of operations, has been closed. Cypress is currently operating gliders and conducting instruction at Lake Elsinore, plans to begin operations at Banning, and plans to operate a two-place glider at Crystalaire in addition to the Grob 103.

Information about Cypress Soaring Inc. is available on their web site at http://www.cypresssoaring.org. Contact information for Orange County Soaring Association officers is on their web site at http://www.ocsoaring.org. 

OCSA wishes to thank all who have belonged to, flown with, and supported Orange County Soaring Association during its 55 years of operation!

Climbing the Sky

It was about 90 degrees F at Crystal today. I launched the in PW5 about 1:30 and we encountered some strong lift on tow before reaching the Second Ridge. I don't often let off tow before getting over the ridge, but this was pretty strong, so I did at 6,300' MSL. I immediately regretted it as I lost 400 to 500 feet before finding any lift. But that thermal lift over the desert was pretty good, and before long I was up to 7,000'. That was enough to get onto the low end of the Second Ridge.

There was another glider flying the ridge lengthwise, and since the wind was from the north I figured that was a good plan - we should find ridge lift. There seemed to be a bumpy mixture of ridge lift and thermals, so eventually I made it to the upper (east) end of the Second Ridge and gained some more altitude, up to about 8,100'. That was enough to let me hop over to a little "third ridge" below Mt. Lewis. It was acting like either ridge lift or anabatic lift, so I was able to work it uphill.

I got over the top of Mt. Lewis and topped out at 9,800', then flew the ridge top and hopped over part of the "bowl" over to Mt. Williamson. Up on top, I seemed to find some lift that was not strictly north-facing ridge lift. The RASPtable map this morning had shown there should be wind from both the north and the south, converging somewhere over the tops of the mountains. Maybe that's what I was finding... it wasn't very strong up there.

Since I was approaching 10,000 feet, at which altitude I always start oxygen, I fumbled around and finally got my Oxymiser on... only to find out I had never turned the regulator on after testing it on the ground! I found that I was able to reach behind me and find the knob - I don't think I have ever done that in flight before. And then of course I never broke the 10,000' layer after all.

I came back down and worked the Second Ridge again. There were a couple of other gliders there, and we shared a thermal for a while - that's always fun. I was able to run the whole length of the ridge and stay at the same altitude, so there was definitely some ridge lift working.

My tailbone started getting a little sore after more than an hour, so I headed back toward the airport. Earlier I had realized I had not done any slips for a long time, so I practiced those a few times. Out over the desert, there was light lift everywhere, so it would have been possible to stay up all day. Another glider was a bit higher than me and wanted to land first, so I was able to just loaf around in lift and stay up while he landed.

Since winds were "light and variable" I had my choice of landing direction, so I chose runway 7 which would let me roll out close to my tiedown spot. Of course there was lift all the way down. By the time I turned onto my base leg, I realized I was pretty high. And I had been too close in on the downwind leg, so the base leg was not long enough to really let me lose much altitude. Full spoilers did the trick, but I was about 1/3 of the way down the mile-long runway before I got close to the ground. Um... would have been a good time to use a slip like I had just practiced - but I didn't think of it! Something to work on next time. One quirky thing about Crystal is that there's a hump just about in the middle of the runway, so just when I was about to touch down I had to hold off a bit. My landing was smooth and straight, and the wind helped me keep good directional control and level wings until I stopped just about 50 feet or so from my parking spot. A far cry from my last landing when the winds were all over the place on both takeoff and landing!

So... an hour and 41 minutes and 4,000' of altitude gain after a low release. That's one of the most satisfying aspects of local flying: really climbing the sky. This was one of the first times - if not THE first time - I have been able to climb all the way from the desert to the top of the mountains.

Numerous Cumulus (not just a Few CU)

Last Saturday was one of those lift-is-everywhere days at Crystalaire. Oddly, there seemed to be more moisture in the high desert air than in Orange County south of the mountains... or maybe just more uplift due to surface heating. The forecast called for north winds, which were present upstairs but not so much on the surface.

When I arrived, I found that the PW5 glider was not exactly where I left it, though I was pretty sure no one else had been flying it. The knots in the tie-down ropes were not mine, and it was about two feet further east. Hmm... Then I found that on the nose tie-down, the knot on the ring had come loose, which allowed the glider to yaw with the wind. Tracks under the wheels showed that it had "walked" the two feet, including dragging the main wheel over a sizable rock. The wing tie-down ropes had been on the ground cable, and had slid along it. Some good Samaritan had later moved the wing ropes to staked or concreted chains, which stopped it from walking any further. Mystery solved!

I only had to wait a short time for a tow. As soon as I lifted off, the tail yawed about 15-20 degrees to the right, and the glider drifted over the right edge of the runway. No amount of rudder would counteract it. (The PW5's rudder is really tiny.) As the chief instructor later noted, it was the kind of thing which would cause a new pilot to release and land straight ahead on the runway, which I did consider, but as it was not getting any worse, I decided to stick it out. As we gained airspeed, I gained more rudder authority, and all was well.







Since the best lift was reported to be over the mountains, and I kind of got skunked last time, I took a high tow and let off in good lift. It was all uphill from there.










I spent most of the next two hours between 8,000 and 10,000 feet under and between these nice cumulus clouds. Figuring out which ones were building and which were dissipating was the biggest challenge of the day. Great fun!

I tried to get over the top of Mt. Lewis, but the margin between the mountaintop and the cloud base was a bit too narrow. Maybe next time.

There was indeed a strong north wind at altitude, and if I did not pay attention to it while thermalling it kept drifting me south toward the mountains. Outside air temperature was about 0 to -2 Celsius, but only my feet got cold, and only after about 90 minutes.

Steep turns

Approach and landing were... interesting. The ground reported the wind as being from the northeast. When I got low enough to see the tetrahedron, it indicated wind from the northwest. I decided it was not strong enough to change landing directions from runway 25 to runway 7. Then on final approach, my airspeed increased quite a bit, so it seems that the wind had diminished, leaving me with a lot of kinetic energy. That energy turned into quite a long float before touchdown (which was not at a high ground speed, so it's not like I had a tailwind). By the time I stopped rolling, the wind socks were all straight down - dead calm! So it seems that I had the bad timing to approach and land as a thermal passed through, which caused complete rotation of the wind direction over the course of a few minutes.

All in all, a fun two-hour flight with challenges at both ends.

Is California City the new Hemet?

I have only been to Cal City once, have never flown there, and don't know any of the people involved in the shutdown saga. All I know is what I've read in the Tehachapi group on Yahoo. But I was somewhat involved in and deeply affected by the Hemet shutdown, and some commentators have compared this to Hemet, so let me offer a few thoughts. Keep in mind that much of this is speculation. The chain of events are somewhat similar… maybe the underlying causes are similar too.

It is not really about airport safety. If it was about safety, then airport officials would work with the various aviation groups at the airport to effect improvements. Attempting to address safety issues when they are not really the issue is pointless. At Hemet, the officials refused to meet. Then when they lost the decision on our FAA complaint, they refused to negotiate in good faith. County officials chose to ignore CalTrans citations and recommendations for years until they could use them to their advantage. This appears to have happened at Cal City as well.

It is not really about airport growth. If it was about airport growth, there would be studies and consultants and estimates to support it. The airport officials would develop an airport plan which could be responsibly implemented. At Hemet, the airport officials published a sham plan which ignored the history of soaring and the huge fraction of airport operations which were due to glider operations. The plan postulated growth in other operations which were totally unsupported by any studies or statistics. The plan was developed with no input from airport users, and published silently with no notice to the public to invite comments.

The motivation is probably personal gain, not the public interest. People do not resort to underhanded tactics for honorable goals. At Hemet, the county made a deal with the FBO to help get rid of the commercial, club, and private gliders. The county put pressure on other FBOs to not deal with the gliders. The county insisted on applying FBO standards to clubs. The county refused to offer leases to clubs, insisting on month-to-month rentals but requiring renters to invest in infrastructure, which they could lose on 30 days' notice. The county ignored strong cautions in the environmental impact study they themselves commissioned. The county was willing to place turboprop aircraft operations within 100 feet of residences. They were clearly highly motivated to get rid of the gliders and pursue other changes at all cost. Our task was to figure out why.

The airport officials may not be aviators. They do not know what works for aviators, and may not care. They have other motivations which we do not understand. They may be judged by how much they increase revenue or reduce costs, regardless of what that means for aviation. They may not remember or understand the obligations that came with FAA improvement funds they received in the past.

It may be based on completely unrealistic expectations and ego. People in power convince themselves that something is possible and desirable. Even when it is obvious to others that the idea will not work, ego prevents people from backing down. At Hemet, there seemed to be two stated goals, neither of which was realistic, and only one (or neither) of which may have been the true motivation.

- The county wanted to keep CalFire operations at Hemet, and expected the state to pay for improvements to CalFire facilities, ignoring California's fiscal situation which precludes such investment. Why was this believed to be so important? Because by building new CalFire facilities in the space occupied by the gliders, they would make room for redeveloping the older section of the airport.

- The county said they wanted to attract more jet traffic to Hemet, and expand runways to accommodate it. Really? Who needs to fly jets into Hemet - or into California City? Neither is a hotbed of industrial activity, or the home of wealthy people with private jets. Was this a diversion?

At Cal City, the history of infrastructure changes that did not work out, and escalating efforts to make them work, may also have been motivated by ego.

It is about money and power. Someone has a lot to gain, or already is getting a lot and is aiming to protect it. It may be about power, but more likely it is about money. If you can figure out who stands to gain and how, you may be able to come up with a counterstrategy. This can be difficult to discern because of secrecy. 

- At Hemet, the best theory seemed to be that elected county officials would gain political contributions from construction companies seeking contracts for the proposed redevelopment. 

- At Cal City, I have no idea whether the official in charge is elected, so the financial motivation may be different. To figure this out, one needs to keep asking "Why?" until one gets to the root cause of the behavior. Follow the money.

It may involve corruption. At Hemet, we could not prove anything, and did not even really look into this aspect. But the day some glider people went to meet with county officials, they had to wait in the lobby while the FBI conducted a raid on the county offices. And a careful reading of CalFire board meeting minutes reveals a sudden reversal of their position, violating their own process, after they met with Riverside county officials. If corruption is involved, honest organizations will always be at a disadvantage, because the corrupt ones will always be more highly motivated.

It can be nearly impossible to counteract a highly motivated person who already has power. At Hemet, we eventually realized that the only way to even attempt to counter the situation would be to (1) get involved in county politics (a county where few of us reside), and (2) spend large amounts of money on the political process. We did not have the desire or means to do either.

FAA and CalTrans cannot force airports to make improvements or spend money. They can do passive things such as withholding funds, revoking or refusing to renew permits, etc. FAA cannot force an airport to produce an airport plan that is fair or realistic. At Hemet, one option would have been to make the lights on the main runway flush to the ground to make towplane operations easier. Another option would have been to reconfigure the glider runway. The county chose to do none of these, chose to avoid working on an operating plan, and chose to wait for the gliders to leave due to intolerable conditions. The only leverage we have is that FAA may withhold future funds if they find the county violated the ruling that they handed down regarding the gliders.

Back in the Saddle

I finally got to go flying today, after a gap of two months. I know, lots of people in many parts of the country have to take much bigger vacations from soaring due to the weather, and those of us in Southern California are very lucky to be able to fly all year 'round. December and January were just very busy times for me with family activities, a couple of camping trips, and some weekend projects. Last Saturday the weather didn't look good... this Saturday it looked like the wave might be working, and warm enough that thermals might work if the wave didn't.

Driving to Crystal, the weather was beautiful. There were lennies all around, but none right over Crystal or the closest mountains. I prepped the PW5 as usual, and polished the canopy, and lubricated all the control joints. By the time I was finishing, little wave-generated clouds were forming within reach. I could see two or three gliders very high over the mountains. I took a high tow over the top of Mt. Lewis, but alas I did not connect with any wave. I didn't even see any more wave-generated clouds while I was up. I did find some weak lift lower down, probably convergence, at about 7500' AGL near the Devil's Punchbowl, and exploited it by flying at minimum sink speed. It really just amounted to "zero sink", as did some thermal lift over the wash west of the airport. I ended up with a 47-minute flight - and a really good landing and rollout.

Back in the saddle

I have not written any blog posts about flying for quite a while. Two reasons: I've been really busy with other responsibilities, and I have not been flying because both of our club gliders have been out of service. Our PW5 single-place glider is now fixed, so it's time to get "back in the saddle again".

In August of 2012, one of our club members landed out in a field, and the main landing gear was badly damaged. Major fiberglass work was required. We tried to work with a pair of local people who said they could do the job, but it turned out to be beyond their ability to plan and execute. They were not able to engineer the repair themselves, and needed guidance from the factory - in Poland. Getting the list of parts, and figuring out how to order them, and getting the repair guidance just did not progress. In December we pulled the plug with those guys.

There are a couple of very good composite repair shops in California, neither of which is close to us. The one we worked with was over 500 miles away. One of our club members towed the ship up there as part of a vacation trip. The shop produced an estimate pretty quickly, our insurance company approved it quickly, checks were sent and received, and the work was begun. They were qualified to design the repair, and they didn't need to order parts from Poland after all. The work was done by some time in May. My wife and I drove up there to retrieve the ship. Fortunately our insurance settlement paid mileage for both round trips!

In May or June our Grob 103 became unavailable (another long story), so we've been completely grounded.

We assembled the PW5 back at Crystal in June and were eager to fly it, but it would not power up. I traced many wires, fuses and circuit breakers, and narrowed the problem down to the positive wiring, but could not find the problem. To make things worse, some screws I needed to remove for further troubleshooting were hopelessly stuck. Trying to work on problems like this, kneeling in the dirt, in the desert sun, far from tools and materials, is not easy and not fun!

I was given a contact for an A&P who does avionics part-time at Crystal, and he agreed to take a look,  and work on it at his hangar. Week after week I called him back to see if he had checked into it, but he never returned my calls. Another disappointingly unprofessional local repair person - and most of another month wasted.

So we towed the glider down to Orange County and a couple of our experienced club members worked on it. The electrical problem turned out to be fairly easy to fix - a second set of eyes and a decent working environment certainly helped! They also did some other maintenance on the glider and made many improvements to our clunky old trailer.

Today I towed it back to Crystal, Greg and Mike and I assembled it, and Greg and I each got a flight. The composite repair looks beautiful, and the ship is flying fine (except for one pesky instrument problem).

We're back!

The Mallettec Mini Vario

"What's that thing on your hat?" people occasionally ask. It's the Mini Vario from Mallettec. I've had one for a long time - I'm not sure just when I bought it. I'm writing about it today just because I finally had to replace the batteries after 6 or 7 years.

It could not be much simpler. It has a small but mighty clip on the back, so you can just clip it to the edge of your hat next to your ear. There's an on-off switch on the back. There's no volume control.

The unit beeps to let you know when you are in rising air (i.e. air pressure dropping). The rate of the beep varies with the rate of pressure change. It is silent in sink (pressure rising). It is so sensitive that it changes if I hold it in my hand and raise it over my head. There's a very tiny adjustment screw, in case the beep rate is too fast or slow, but I've never had to use it.

I originally bought the Mini Vario when I became aware of the safety benefits of audio varios, and I was flying a lot in Blaniks with no electric devices at all. I still use it as a backup or a cross-checking device.

One of our ships has an audio vario system but the static plumbing is sometimes flaky. We have not been able to find the problem, but I suspect it has to do with moisture in the lines. If I don't believe what the vario is telling me compared to the altimeter changes or the feel of the air, I turn on the Mini Vario to break the tie.

I really believe in having backups for systems, because they have saved my neck a few times. In my first contest - one of my first cross-county flights - the battery totally failed, and that ship only has an electric vario. So the Mini Vario really saved the day.

My only complaint is I wish it were a little louder, or had a volume adjustment. If the wind noise in the glider is loud, it can be a little hard to hear. Other than that, it's a terrific little device and I almost never fly without it!

Back in the Air after Refinishing

I have not posted since early March because... I have not flown since then. Our Grob 103 Twin Astir has been out of service in order to have the top surface of the stabilizer and elevator stripped and refinished. It was peeling very badly, so we took it out of service between the late-winter BFR season (it seems several of us have our BFR dates in January-February), and the start of the good soaring season.

The stabilizer was peeling, but that's not quite the right term for what happened to the surface of the elevator - disintegrating is more like it! Over this winter, the surface really just started crumbling before our eyes.

We chose a shop in Tehachapi to do the work. Getting the stab there and back was a bit of a trick, because it is is 10.8 feet wide. That's too big to fit in my full-size pickup bed, which Pythagoras says is 8.9 feet diagonally. Letting it hang out over the tailgate or stick up over the cab seemed like a recipe for disaster. So one of our club members put it in his camper, which allowed it to go over the cab and be protected.

To bring it back, I decided to put it in the glider's trailer, since there's a nice padded pair of brackets for just that purpose. From home to Crystal (to get the trailer) to Tehachapi, back to Crystal and back home is about 320 miles, so retrieving and installing the stab a couple weeks ago was an all-day affair. It looks great! As it turns out, the surfaces had been reworked but not stripped before, so this time two or three layers of material were removed. The elevator is now measurably lighter, so it should be somewhat more responsive.

Then the ship was due for its annual inspection. Fortunately nothing else major came up, so last week it was signed off as airworthy again. This Saturday several of us spent the morning lubricating all the control linkages, washing the ship, putting a coat of wax on it (gotta protect that new finish!), polishing the canopy, and doing general maintenance required for a ship that sits out all the time.

Since significant maintenance had been done, a solo test flight is required before any passenger flights would be allowed. That job fell to me, so I took it up to 1,000' AGL for a quick checkout. On takeoff, I  PIO'd it a bit, recovering after the second oscillation - maybe the lighter elevator made it react more quickly? Or maybe it's just that I haven't flown for a month and a half...

One of the fellows who came out this weekend is a former club member who is looking to rejoin. Recently he has been signed off to fly in high-performance gliders and at Crystalaire, so now he will need to get a checkout in our Grob 103. I took him up for an orientation flight so he could start to learn the specifics of this ship. I let off tow in lift over the "second ridge", and between us we took it up to about 8,700' MSL a few times. We landed after exactly one hour.

Another club member who hasn't flown much lately wanted to get some practice before tackling his BFR, so we went up again. This time we got a-l-m-o-s-t to 10,000' MSL. We headed over the the area near the top Mt. Lewis, expecting to find some thermals popping, or wind blowing up the sides of the "bowls" between the mountains. Nothing. It was weird - way calmer than we usually would find up there.

Back down below the second ridge, we found some more lift, but not quite as high, and then out over the desert we found some marginal wave lift. There was a fairly strong wind out of the west, and weak wave had been reported there a couple of hours earlier, and sure enough it was still there. That gave us enough time for him to practice stalls, slow flight, etc. which might be requested during a BFR flight. We came in after exactly 90 minutes.

So... I flew for 2 hours and 40 minutes, but since I let the other pilots do much of the flying, I only get to log 50 minutes. But it was really great to be back in the air again!

Flight Review

It's been quite a while since I have posted... and over two months since I have flown. January weekends were busy with family and organization commitments, and the weather was not so great. Then in February we had a death and two births in my immediate family, so weekends were again taken up. Lots of stuff happening with our soaring club, though... repairs, moving and working on equipment, and making plans for the future.

Private pilots need to have a "biennial" Flight Review (what we call a BFR) every two years, and mine expired in February. Another pilot and I scheduled ours for this weekend. It consists of an hour of ground instruction/quizzing, and an hour of flight instruction or three takeoffs and landings. The weather forecast was iffy for Saturday, with possibly high winds, but we all went up to Crystalaire hoping for the best. By the time we finished the ground meeting, the winds were 10-12 knots, pretty well aligned with the runway, so it was not a problem at all.

In the ground portion we talked a lot about emergency procedures, aeronautical decision making, and reviewed several serious accidents (one of which was a fatal crash by a friend of ours). We spent some time talking about optimal bank angles for minimizing altitude loss (45 degrees is best), and how that applies to low-altitude turns during  rope breaks etc., and how it applies in thermalling.

The other pilot decided he was not ready to do the flight portion of his review this day (he's not flown much lately), so the rest of the day was mine. I had never flown with this instructor before, so I was a bit nervous. It's not a pass-or-fail test, but it is still a critical review, and I always want to do well.

Flight #1 was a 3000' tow. I demonstrated imminent stall signs, and immediate recovery from stalls. We did several steep turns and measured the altitude loss, to confirm what we had discussed on the ground. When we were preparing to land, another glider had not cleared the runway and I had to discuss options for avoiding it. My plan was to overfly it and land long, but while we were on final approach the glider cleared out and we landed normally.

Flight #2 was a demonstration of tow plane signals which ended up with a downwind landing.

Flight #2 was intended to be a demonstration of a modified pattern, but based on our position relative to the field (and a too-hasty decision), it turned into a demonstration of a slip to a downwind landing.

My takeoffs, landings, stalls and turns were very good, but some of the other aspects of the flights resulted in some feedback from the instructor - that's why we do these reviews! We exchanged emails later that night to recap the day.

After we were all done, the other pilot and I removed the stabilizer from the ship. It has some significant  peeling and flaking of the top surfaces, so we are taking it to a shop to be refinished. That should take about two weeks, so we should have it flying again by early April.

Mind the gap!

Some places, that means "don't fall in the gap between the platform and the train." In soaring, that means "don't get trapped when the Foehn gap closes under you." I've learned about it in training and read about it, but never experienced it until today.

The RASPtable forecast showed possible wave from a southwest wind. The NWS forecast showed increasing cloudiness after noon in the high desert. Both were spot on! When I arrived at Crystalaire there were lennies far to the west, but it was clear overhead. By the time I was ready to fly, wispy wave clouds were starting to form over the local mountains. I had to wait quite a while for the tow, and we watched rotor clouds forming over the foothills, and increasing wave clouds over the mountains.




I launched at about 12:45 and there was only moderate rotor turbulence on tow. The tow pilot did a great job of dragging me right into the wave lift. When things got smooth, I let off at 7,800 MSL, which at 4,400 AGL was quite a high tow for me. But it worked! I worked the wave back and forth a bit, trying to find the strongest part. It did not form a very long line, and I had the best luck staying pretty stationary over the Devil's Punchbowl and facing into the wind. I bet my groundspeed was only 5 knots.

For quite a while, the only clouds were over the mountains. By the shape of the bottom sections, they were clearly driven by wind, but the tops were not smooth like classic lenticular clouds. There was some wind shear, with Hemlholtz waves visible occasionally. We had rain earlier this week and the mountains were dusted with snow, though not as much as I expected. There were a couple other gliders exploring the wave, but not very close to me. I eventually got to 12,200' MSL, much better than I expected today!




Secondary wave clouds started forming behind me over the desert. Initially they were pretty rough but eventually turned into classic lenticular clouds. Look how smooth the top of this one is. They look like static formations, but if you ever get a close look at the upwind edge you'll see it is constantly forming as the wind moves moist air up into it, and on the downwind edge it is constantly dissolving as the wind pushes the moist air down and it re-evaporates. The smooth top indicates the boundary of fast-flowing, condensed moisture.  You can see a gap called the "Foehn gap" between the trailing edge of the clouds over the mountains, and the secondary clouds over the desert.

The "standing waves" appear to keep the clouds in pretty much the same places for quite a while, but in  fact they are constantly evolving. The gap in the previous picture disappeared at its western end, as the two clouds merged. Over about a 5 to 10 minute period, that gap got smaller and gradually closed to the east - picture a zipper closing, with me as the pull-tab! I spotted it happening pretty early on, and headed east at a pretty good speed. I was actually higher than the clouds, probably by about 1,500 to 2,000 feet. I suppose I could have hopped over the northern (secondary) wave, but what if it developed even more to the north? So I continued east (in moderate lift, not losing altitude) until I was clear of it. This picture is looking back from where I came. See the narrow gap in the middle of the picture? That was much bigger 5 minutes earlier! I had heard about this phenomenon, so I was prepared for it, but I had never seen it in action.


Along the way, I saw a "cloud bow", a bull's-eye-shaped rainbow in thin clouds below me, with the sun behind me in the opposite direction. I tried to take pictures of it, but I only had a few seconds - and I was concentrating on getting out of the gap - so they didn't come out very well.


You can see the huge difference in cloud cover between picture 1 and picture 4. That cloud growth occurred in about 45 minutes! And hmm... now the cloud was covering the airport! If it grew much bigger, I'd be stuck above the clouds far from the field. I decided to duck under the cloud so I could be sure of getting back, even if that meant cutting my flight short. At this point I was still close to 12,000' MSL, and the cloud base was probably about 8,000' MSL, so I had a lot of altitude to lose. By a combination of speeding up to 80+ knots, and using spoilers, I got down under the clouds. But I had to fight quite a headwind to get back to the airport, which cost even more altitude. I didn't get very low, but low enough that I did not have much altitude left for exploring.

A couple of other gliders and I explored the area to the west of the airport, trying to reconnect with the lower part of the wave. It was there, but not wide enough or strong enough to let me go southwest far enough to really reach the leading edge of the cloud. So I eventually landed after just over an hour. By this time the clouds were covering 70% to 80% of the sky - just like NWS had said.

All in all, a very satisfying, interesting, and challenging flight.

How can there be lift EVERYWHERE?

I haven't posted for a while, though I have flown. Things have been pretty busy... I'll catch up on some recent events in the next post (I hope).

Today's forecast looked good, but with one caveat: NWS listed "broken cirrus" starting about 2:00 pm. "Broken" is a technical term that means more than half the sky. If that much cirrus came in, it could shut down ground heating. The soaring forecast showed a convergence of winds right across the top of the San Gabriel mountains - that would be good! Driving up from the south about 9:30, I could already see clouds right on the top, and it was way to early for them to be CU from thermal heating. The local instructor I usually check with said they had had great conditions for the last two weeks, and expected more of the same today.

I prepped the Grob 103. The gliderport was hosting a bunch of Boy Scouts flights... between those, a down towplane, a wind shift which meant towing six gliders to the west end of the runway, and a line mixup, I didn't launch until 1:45. Fortunately the cirrus was staying scattered. The lower clouds looked great - more over the mountains than the desert, and cycling fast enough you could tell new ones (good lift) from old ones.

On tow, we had an "event" - I don't know if you'd call it a close call or not. After takeoff we did a 270-degree turn to head south. That took us over the downwind leg for the opposite-direction runway. Fairly abruptly, the towplane climbed, not the typical flying-through-lift jump - and I had to catch up. Looking down, I saw a glider on downwind leg about 100-200 feet below us. I don't know if it caught the tow pilot by surprise and this was "evasive action" or whether he had him well in sight... but it was closer than I've ever come to another glider while on tow.

I let off at 2700' AGL (6100' MSL) in good lift. I found good stuff right away, and took successive thermals up to 8,000, 9,500, and then 10,600 over the mountains. I overflew Mt. Baden-Powell, then went chasing ever higher clouds.

 

Some like the ones above looked nice and sharp on top, which indicated they were growing and would have lift underneath. But they were cycling so fast that they died before I got to them.

In the next pic you can see I'm close up under some smaller ones. The trick was to look for wisps of moisture that were just starting to condense, and quickly get under them.






The highest I could get was about 11,000 MSL under these clouds. I very rarely hit any serious sink between patches of lift. Eventually I headed out over the desert and... the lift got even better. Away from the mountains, with their moist lift, it was all blue, but there were long straight stretches that I assume were convergence lift. I went probably ten miles straight north and was usually in zero sink or minor lift. Eventually I reached some little lakes and I was still at 10,000+. Then... I hit even MORE thermal lift (with no cloud to mark it) and worked that up to 12,500! This was probably the first time I've found a higher lift ceiling over the desert than over the mountains. It really felt like the lift was EVERYWHERE today. That's not usually possible - what goes up must come down - but if there was a large-scale convergence due to the south wind coming over the mountains, colliding with the mild offshore wind that was building, maybe there was a widespread general uplift in addition to the great thermals.

I decided to come in after about two hours of great flying, and had to use spoilers to get down from 10,000 feet! As I got down near our "report-in" altitude of 5000' MSL, I could see there was a glider staging for takeoff, and a glider on the radio was getting ready to land. Now usually, we have limited ability to go into a "holding pattern", but as I circled just to the west of the airport, I found a wide, gentle thermal. I held there for 10-15 minutes while one glider took off and three landed - and I had gained 1,500' without even trying. Highly unusual!

I ended up with a total flight time of 2 hours and 25 minutes. Everyone I talked to on the ground agreed it was a terrific day for lift.

Friday the 13th? Bah! But still....

I read quite a few publications about flying, not just soaring, because I want to be the best pilot I can be.  It's frequently stated that many accidents come about not because of a catastrophic event, but because of a "chain" of things that lead to a bad situation or bad decision. These things can be actual problems, or issues that stay on the pilot's mind and cause distractions. I try to be very self-aware and keep an eye out for multiple things going wrong. Many of these are just normal things that crop up during flight planning and prep, but some days more of them happen than usual. That doesn't necessarily mean I won't fly, but it makes my "spidey-sense" go on high alert and make sure I'm being extra careful.

I'm not superstitious, but this series of unfortunate events started the night of Friday the 13th.

• I thought I was going to have a passenger going for an intro flight on Saturday. That's fine, I like giving rides. He was on and off all evening. He wouldn't get to the gliderport until noon, which meant no smooth early ride, and possibly waiting in line for a towplane if we took off during prime time. It doesn't really make much difference, but it meant I needed to think about which plane to prep, what time to fly, whether anyone else would need the 2-seater, etc.
• I found that my PDA (an old HP iPAQ) had lost its memory. That's happened a few times before, usually due to failure to charge the battery in time. But this time the battery and charger were OK, so it's unexplained. Because I have changed computers since the last time this happened, I had to mess around a bit to get the programs and files installed, rather than running a simple restore. And then had to test the GPS to make sure it was working. This took well into the late hours of the evening.

Saturday, before flying, stuff kept happening:

• I got a text message that the passenger had decided not to go. The message was from 2:30 in the morning. So I'm wondering: what's up with that? Oh well, at least I'll get to fly the PW5, which is easier to prep and simpler to fly on what was looking to be a good thermal day.
• During the preflight inspection, an issue came up with the PW5. I won't go into it here, but it caused me some delay and concern as I had to walk around and search both ships and both trailers, and contact the most recent pilot to ask about it. His phone number had changed, but I contacted him by text message and later talked to him. More extra tasks and delay and distraction.
• I usually use my own O2 tank with the PW5's electronic system. Once before, and again today, I could not get the PW5's screw-on connector to seal right, which means O2 leaks out. Probably we need to replace the O-ring again. After trying for quite a while, I decided to use my own Oxymiser system, which means removing the PW5's box and tubing. That's pretty simple, but it does mean using a manual flow control instead having the automatic system come on at 10,000 feet.
• I started up my PDA/GPS and it got a good fix. Whew! Last time it didn't, and I didn't get a flight trace. But a few minutes later it popped up the screen demanding the license key (since I had reinstalled SeeYou Mobile last night). Fortunately I have that key in a text file on the device. Unfortunately cut-n-paste wouldn't work, so I had to write down and enter the key manually. Just another annoyance... in 90+ degree heat...

I nearly always take a break after the inspection and prep, have my light lunch, cool down, and then go fly. When I get back to the ship, there are always a few final items to take care of, because I don't like to put certain things into the cockpit because they get hot. When I was nearly ready, I found I needed to make yet another trip back to the "pilot's lounge". On the walk back to the plane I reviewed all the distractions and delays, and decided that they had not accumulated into anything that would keep me from flying. As I mentioned, I'm aware of cumulative distractions, but all these items had been resolved, so I put them out of my mind and focused for the flight. The CU's had been popping since 9:00 but were not overdeveloping, so it looked to be a good day. I took off at 12:45.

Stuff kept happening:

• During the tow, the red emergency canopy release handle fell off. Just fell off! I ignored it and focused on the tow, which is a critical part of the flight. I didn't need to be feeling around my feet looking for it while flying formation! Later in the flight, I found that it had nicely landed on the pedestal within easy reach, and it simply screwed back on.
• Once I started thermaling, I noticed that the "thermal analyzer" function of SeeYou was not activating. That made me wonder what other settings might not be set the way I wanted, but nothing else arose during the flight.
• I received a pulse oximeter for Christmas, but had only tried it once before in flight. This time I tried it again, but I could not see the display and put it away. Later on the ground I saw that it was not detecting my finger. I tried it later at home and it worked fine. Maybe I didn't put it on right, or maybe it got overheated? Another distraction...

All that aside, it turned out to be an outstanding day for soaring! I let off tow in lift and never lost it. Very quickly I got up to 10,000' MSL and never went below that altitude until it was time to come home. Most of the time I was above 11,000, and my max was 12,776. 

The CU's coming off the northern edge of the mountains were abundant, close enough to nearly form "cloud streets" at times. 

The lift was turbulent, though, with lots of ups and downs. This flight trace is color-coded by vertical speed. It's really rare to see the lift and sink so interleaved. 

The CU were not big or strong enough to overdevelop into thunderstorms in this region. I could see to the east that there was a whole north-south line of bigger CU. In the picture you can see that it's hazy brown below the cloudbase, and clear above. (Click on the pic for a better look.) I think there was a convergence of air masses triggering those CU's, different from the ones where I was which seemed to be thermally generated.

And the lift was not just under the clouds, I found lift between them that allowed me to go higher than the cloudbase. This was probably the best thermal lift day I've experienced since coming to Crystal. I didn't really go very far - I've written before about the limitations of flying club planes - but I did go further west and north than I ever have. Someday I'll map out a local cross-country triangle and do some goal-oriented flights. For now I'm just having great fun cloud-hopping at 12,000 feet!

I also went north over the desert and continued to find lift to 10 thousand feet. I flew for nearly two and a half hours. It would not have been a good day for my passenger's intro flight - we would have had to start much earlier in the day when it was not so turbulent.

Weird but it Worked

Sunday's forecast was for winds from the west or northwest north of the mountains, but from the south down in the L.A. basin. That made for a possible convergence at right angles right on the top of the mountains. It looked like there could be the possibility of mountain wave lift in places. It was warm enough for some thermal heating too, if the winds did not blow them out.

I decided to fly our Grob 103 Twin Astir because I wanted to check out some issues with how it handles. Our club members have been discussing how heavy the aileron controls are, and whether the stick forces are increasing or not. (If any readers have experience with this in Twin Astirs, I'd like to hear about it. This specific model is known to be different from other Grob 103 variants.) Since the winds were fairly light, I figured it would be a good day to experiment with it.

There were reports that lift was working well over Mt. Lewis. I towed to 3900' AGL (7300' MSL) over the "second ridge" and let off in decent lift, hoping to work my way up to the higher mountains. It was pretty patchy lift, though, and I had to drift down the ridge (westward) to keep sufficient clearance. I found more lift over the valley next to the Devil's Punchbowl than I did over the hills. It was enough to slowly creep up, but nothing very exciting. A couple of other gliders joined me, but none of us were climbing very fast. For the first hour I was up and down by just a few hundred feet.

The lift was puzzling, as it often can be in this area. Sometimes it was too narrow to circle like a thermal, and there was rotor-like turbulence next to it, but the lift was not smooth as one would expect if it was wave. For a while it seemed to be parallel to the second ridge, as if it was a small wave coming off of it, but other times it was perpendicular to it.

After about an hour of hard work, I found a big, wide area of lift that felt more like thermal, and shared it with (as I later learned) a DG-400. That is really one of the fun parts of local soaring: flying near, but not too near, other sailplanes. Watching each other swoop and turn big lazy circles, or tighter turns trying to core a thermal, you feel like you're weightless, and the ground far below is irrelevant. It's amazing how suddenly your companion glider can be a couple hundred feet above or below you, as you each get into and out of areas of lift and sink. Unfortunately I did not bring my camera along this time.

One of the great thrills is finally "ratcheting up" the altitude and finding that you're going up more than going down, and being able to relax and enjoy the flight. Eventually the lift was stronger and more consistent and I reached 9,000' MSL. By that time I had been up for nearly two hours, and I had kind of a time limit to the afternoon, so I called it a day. Not a spectacular day, but ultimately a successful one. I ended up with a total time of 2:08.

Talking with other pilots back on the ground, we all agreed it was a weird day. Some lucky pilots broke through to some good wave lift over the higher mountains and got to 14,000'. Others of us in thermal  lift topped out about 9,000'. Some of the lift was hard to categorize, so we figured it was some combination of convergence and moderate wave over the hills, and thermal over the flats. Whatever!!

Working more than flying

I had not flown since my great wave flight in March... I've been busy with projects at home and various commitments on the weekends. A lot has happened in the last couple of months. Due to some mid-year leadership changes, I've been appointed President of our soaring club. We've been working on transitioning both of our ships to Crystalaire, which will be our new base of operations for the foreseeable future. With our Blanik trainers grounded until the AD gets resolved, we've been working on some changes in rules and procedures to refocus our club operations around Private Pilots and our glass ships instead of around training.

Today we reassembled our Grob 103 Twin Astir at Crystal and did some maintenance on it. Sometimes the wings go on easily, but today we had a lot of trouble with the second wing. We don't assemble it often enough to have a real "groove" to our process. I took a test flight late in the afternoon in it with another pilot. The weather today was weird: windy out of the west, with some rotor clouds and some cumulus, but no wave clouds. There were few other pilots flying, but those that did reported strong lift and strong sink. It was quite turbulent on tow, and I had trouble with one of the flight controls (which I'm not going to detail), so I was not flying my best. I let off earlier than I planned because we flew through some very strong lift a couple of times. But the lift was hard to work and the wind was strong, and we kept drifting downwind out of it. Having started out low, we did not have much altitude to burn getting back to the lift. After just a few tries I had to enter the pattern. And of course THEN we found strong lift! Although the wind was strong and gusty, it was blowing straight down the runway, so the landing was not difficult (thought I gently bounced it).

After we landed we checked with two other club members who had flown, and our stories all matched: found strong lift on tow, got off tow at about 2,000' AGL, then could not work the lift, and landed after 9 to 12 minutes. That's twice I've done that at Crystal. My new motto is "Won't get fooled again!" No one opted to try a second flight - it just wasn't worth it.

This makes two years in a row that Memorial Day at Crystal was too windy to be fun. Last year was even worse! Maybe as the summer progresses we'll get rid of these Pacific storms and get some normal thermal soaring.

Mountain Climbing in a Greenhouse

We can never quite tell how a day will shape up for soaring. I went to Crystalaire this Saturday not even sure if I would fly, wondering if the weather would turn out like the forecasts, had a long wait for a tow, and ended up having one of my best flights ever!

Winds in front of an approaching Pacific storm were forecast to be from the south. If other conditions are right, this can cause mountain wave lift between the gliderport and the San Gabriel Mountains. The RASPtable forecast for 13:00 at 500 millibars (about 19,000 feet MSL) looked like this. The gliderport is somewhere near the word "Llano". The reddish area would be the strongest lift. But would it really happen?

At the field, lenticular clouds were clearly visible to the east. The senior instructor said the wave was working and had been for several days. The temperature on the ground was much warmer than I expected, and the wind was warm, indicating a foehn effect. I had some tasks to take care of earlier in the day, so I did not get fully ready to fly until about 13:30, by which time there was a line of 5-6 gliders waiting to take off. Then one of the two working towplanes was grounded with an electrical problem, so I didn't actually take off until 14:33. I almost canceled because the southwest wind was 15 knots gusting to 18, which exceeds the PW5's maximum demonstrated crosswind component (a guideline, not a hard limit). But there is a short crosswind runway which aligns very nicely with that wind direction, which would turn a strong crosswind into a great headwind for landing. So up I went.

There was a lot of turbulence on tow, much of which was no doubt wave rotor. I let off tow at 4,100' AGL (7,500' MSL) when we flew into smooth wave lift. I don't remember the exact sequence of climbs and loss of lift (I may update this after I peruse my flight trace), but I easily got up to 13,000 MSL, higher than I had ever been in wave. Most of the time I was heading southwest directly into the wind. The best speed for climbing seemed to be about 48 knots, which is Best L/D speed for the PW5... I expected it to be down around Minimum Sink, so I'll have to think about that. (Comments, anyone?) At times my groundspeed appeared to be nearly zero (though I did not have GS shown on my PDA/GPS... I'll have to add that number to the display) so my airspeed of 48 must have been very close to the wind speed. Look back at the forecast map above: the wind barbs show 45 knots, though that was for 19,000'

Having reached 13,000', my thoughts turned to overflying Mt. Baldy (actually named Mt. San Antonio, about 10,000', and visible as the highest oval in the map above), which has been one of my goals for a while now. That would be challenging, because the wave was 4-5 miles north of the mountains, and I would need extra altitude to fight non-lifting headwinds to get there. The wave lift pretty much paralleled the ridge, so I was able to maintain and even gain as I headed east. By the time I was adjacent to the peak, I was at 16,600'! My previous personal record had been 15,100' over the southern Sierras. Even if I did not make it to Mt. Baldy, this was already a great day!

So I headed toward the peak, but as I mentioned, the winds were strong... my 48kt Best L/D wasn't going to get me there. I had to speed up to 70-75 knots to make any headway, and then of course the glide ratio gets really bad. At times I was seeing 800 to 1000 feet per minute down - not what I needed! By the time I got to the peak - frequently looking over my shoulder at the gliderport getting further away - I was down to 13,000'. SeeYou Mobile was telling me I had plenty of altitude to get back (it's only 14.7 nautical miles), and the look-down angle was good... but I'm really not that comfortable getting far from a landing site. and I have not personally scouted the landout options in this area. And I'm very aware SYM does not know about actual wind conditions, so one always needs to be more conservative than SYM's guidance. If the wind shifted from southwest to west, I would have a big headwind component on the way back. So it did make me nervous. Just as soon as I was over the peak, I turned back to a heading halfway between "direct to Crystal" and "directly back to the wave".

On the way back, I got more of that 1000 fpm sink. By the time I reconnected with the wave, I was down to 9,xxx feet. Back in the wave, I headed west again and by the time I was adjacent to the gliderport I was back to 13,000' again! I had been up for about an hour and a half.

People ask me if it's cold up there. It is and it isn't. I occasionally checked the Outside Air Temperature display, and the lowest I saw at 16,xxx feet, was -10 Celsius, which is +14 Fahrenheit. Yet I was very comfortable in a short-sleeved, lightweight shirt. After about an hour and a half, my feet started to get cold, and there are a few air leaks around the canopy (need to replace some weatherstripping) so there's an occasional draft to the neck. but that's all. The big bubble canopy on the PW5 truly acts as a greenhouse and traps the sunlight, keeping it nice and warm. (Good in the winter, not so good in the summer.) So yes, I went mountain climbing in a greenhouse!

I lost nearly no altitude getting back, and looked directly down on the gliderport from 13,000'. I headed north to lose some altitude, and lost a couple thousand feet or so, but guess what - I contacted the secondary wave (where the senior instructor had reported it hours earlier). Clearly THIS was not the way down. So I headed back south and pulled my spoilers out... and got into some of the worst rotor turbulence I've ever seen, the kind that bounces my head on the canopy and sends radios and stuff flying out of the cabin pockets. I slowed down my airspeed a bit and it was not too bad, and only lasted a couple of minutes. After that I flew with full spoilers, and at times I saw -1250 fpm on the digital display.

As expected, the wind at ground level had not abated, and the tetrahedron showed that the direction had not changed, so I opted to land on the crosswind dirt runway. It's only about 330 feet long before it intersects the dirt approach area of the main runway, and 450 feet to the centerline, but with a strong headwind that should not be a problem. We got lots of practice landing short at Hemet-Ryan! I was quite aware of another glider in the pattern behind me, so I turned off as soon as I could, and was concerned I was in his way as he landed on the main runway, but I was about a hundred feet off the centerline so it was not a problem at all. Total flight time: 2 hours and 2 minutes.

Sorry, no pictures of the beautiful snow on top of Mt. Baldy or the Mountain High ski resort, but I didn't take my camera along this time... and I was kinda busy! I may be able to update this with my flight trace.