Contest / cross-country / landout

Thursday: I did scout the landout sites as planned, all the way to Bishop, and updated my notes with exact mileages, road conditions, etc. A very long driving day! The distances and the terrain got me to thinking a lot and worrying more than I probably should. The route I chose is up the east side of the Sierra Nevada, with the Owens Valley just to the east. Experienced pilots go hundreds of miles this way, nearly every weekend. There are many airports, roads, dry lakes, and some fields all along the way, and most of them are within about 10 miles of the mountains (which are from 8000' to 14,000' MSL). So in theory, if you lose lift, you just leave the mountains and it's an easy glide to a landout spot because you're starting out quite high.

In practice, it doesn't always work that way because of sink or winds. You're not always adjacent to the spots, so you have an angled path which is a little longer. Last year, J had to land in a dirt patch halfway to California City due to heavy sink. Between the safe spots, there's a lot of rough ground. And some of the landouts are several miles down dirt roads, where my truck and the trailer could easily get stuck, so that makes me want to avoid them... which makes the distance between the good ones more challenging. Originally, I thought I was going to fly this with an instructor or experienced XC pilot, but that didn't work out. I've done 3 or 4 mountain / cross country flights, so I have some experience but not a lot. So I'll admit, it was making me nervous.

Friday: I had some prep work to do on the PW5. Somehow working with the aircraft itself makes me more comfortable with new challenges, so by the middle of the day I was feeling OK. But I did have a couple of equipment problems. I had bought a second Camelbak-type water pack, and it was leaking, which took some time to deal with. Then after I programmed the radio memories, hooked up the Volkslogger and PDA and tried uploading waypoints and a flight declaration, I started getting "low battery" warnings from the VL, and the Borgelt displayed 10 volts instead of the 12 it should have had. Long story short, after consulting some other pilots, I decided to fly with it. I have my handheld radio, a new clip-on miniature electronic variometer, my GPS to plug into my PDA, and my charts and info sheets. So I have backups for all the electrical stuff.

By the time I was done with all the prep work and problems, the wind had picked up to about 10-15kts from the south, making a stiff but inconstant crosswind. The PW5 does not do really well in crosswinds, and only one other glider launched the whole time I was there, so I decided to scrub for the day. I've flown in the area several times before.

Saturday morning I talked with L and a couple other pilots about conditions and routes. The weather turned out to be better than predicted, with the wind still out of the south but not too strong. Cumulus clouds started forming both over the Tehachapis and to the north about 10:30, so the launching started about 11:00. I launched at 12:20, let off in lift at 7700 MSL, and quickly got up to 9700 under a little cloud. But 20 minutes into the flight, "low battery" again! My PDA lost its data connection to the GPS but got it back again. As J predicted, the radio was the first to go, but the flight computer was working. I checked that I could reach N with my handheld, and told him I would not leave the valley... low battery this early in the flight was a bad thing.

There were lots of CU, so I hopped around from cloud to cloud seeing how the lift was working. I frankly don't remember how strong it was, but getting up to 10,200 to 10,400 repeatedly was not a problem. Bigger CU to the north were looking promising. So I told N I would go to the east end of the valley and see how it worked. It was doing well, with short hops to the mountains to the north, and I could see California City airport and the Honda track (a good landout site) within gliding distance, so I told N I would head north with Honda track as my first landout option, and he headed out with the trailer. This was about an hour into the flight. The lift was working, and I was soon up to the middle of the Kelso valley... but on the west side, farther from the landout sites than I liked. There were no CU over the eastern ridge. At some point I realized that I was depending on the CU, and thinking that there was no other lift. I now realize that was pessimistic, that there probably was dry "blue" lift in other areas.

The CU followed the western / central mountains, with nothing showing over the ridge that would keep me close to my landout sites. My computer and charts indicated I should be able to make Inyokern, so I headed that way and advised N. The farther I went, the less likely that appeared. Not heavy sink, but a little. With the Honda track visible and at a decent angle, and Inyokern not, I committed to land at the Honda track and recalled N.

As I headed that way, two things started to happen:

1. My glide slope started to deteriorate, and I was approaching a critical altitude that meant I might not make it. Later I figured out why: I had underestimated the effect of the headwind. It wasn't strong, but it was right at me.

2. My variometer went nuts! It was swinging wildly up and down. I finally concluded that the battery voltage was low enough that the vario was unreliable (and the B50 averager display). So I shut off the audio and turned on my micro vario. It's not very loud! (I had not flown with it before, although I have driven around with it a bit.) That faint beeping, and the seat of my pants, and my altimeter were now my clues to lift. And I was wondering whether the data feed from the ship's GPS to my PDA was reliable, with the voltage getting low. Switching to the plug-in GPS during flight is possible, but not desirable. There were no visual lift cues: no CU in the area, no birds, no other gliders, no dust devils (though I didn't really look down much). Well, there was one CU off to the right, but it was about 40 degrees off course, which I thought was too far. Fortunately I found a blue thermal and worked it up to 9300 MSL, which gave me the altitude I needed to no longer be worried about reaching my landing point. But until I found that thermal, I was really getting nervous, and was really busy checking altitudes and glide ratios and making decisions. There was one other landout spot between me and Honda track, a place know as Wide Spot, but it's not very big and is really for emergencies only.

Soon enough I was approaching my landout spot, and could see the truck and trailer waiting. I did not find any other significant lift on the way. That one thermal had done the trick: once I got over the track, I had about 2000' to lose. Go figure! And I found a little light lift right there, so I had to fly around a bit to lose altitude. This being my first off-field landing, I thought back to my XC training. Based on the wind direction (thanks to N on the ground!), and the presence of some power lines, I selected a landing direction, a distance from the "runway", and an Initial Point. (I've learned the TLAR method of approach planning, which does not depend on an altimeter or landmarks. If you want to know what TLAR stands for, contact me with a comment.) The "runway" is a road leading into the Honda test facility. It's a straight two-laner with *very* wide shoulders and no obstructions. I *assumed* it would be empty on a Saturday, but as I was about 200 feet above my pattern entry, a car entered the road. Fortunately I had some light lift and didn't need to land right that minute. After it cleared, another car came, and stopped to talk to N. It turned out to be a security guard, who would stay clear until I landed.

So I set up and landed. My approach was good, although I did get a little fast on late downwind. Touchdown was good, but with a crosswind I could not keep the ship rolling straight. Fortunately the airbrakes and wheel brake work well, and I only rolled off onto the shoulder a little ways. I kept the wings mostly level and did not touch a wing until I stopped. Whew! A good first off-field landing! (It would be good for me to learn to do a "wheel" landing in the PW5, holding off the nose wheel so I can steer on the ground. With a small rudder and fixed wheels, the PW5 on two wheels really does not turn.) Total flight time: 2:25. Total distance: 25 miles (since I turned back southeastward to land).

The security guard took my information, and hung around while we packed up my gear and trailered the glider. He had told N that we were the second glider to land there today. He said they land there all the time - that's why Honda keeps the shoulders graded and cleared, though the're not thrilled. I could not get ConnectMe to download my flight trace from the Volkslogger, and I felt rushed with the guard hanging around, so I'll have to download it next time the glider is out of the trailer.

So... I have now done a semi-successful cross-country flight. It was not long enough for Silver distance, and probably not enough altitude gain for Silver altitude. I probably tied for last place in the Dust Devil Dash, unless someone went to Cal City or returned to Tehachapi.

(click the pic for a bigger view.)
Learnings:

• Preparations pay off. I had information with me about the location and altitude of my landout spots.
• Visual navigation in unfamiliar terrain is tough. Even after previewing some of the areas on Google Earth, things look different.
• Backup devices are important! I used them! (Some would suggest I rely too much on the electronic navigation... probably true, but I don't fly often enough in that area to know my way around.)

I'll have to think on this a while to decide whether the challenge and accomplishment are worth the pre-flight and in-flight stress. I *really* don't want to land out in a location that is tough to get the trailer to, or in a rough desert area. I know, some people do this all the time... and have something to prove. I like to fly for fun, and parts of this flight were definitely not fun. But I probably *do* need to do a certain amount of XC since I want to be an instructor. I do feel good about working through the problems that I encountered in flight.

Whew! That's a long post! I hope you find it helpful... I needed to write it.

Preparing for my first contest

The Dust Devil Dash is an annual contest that starts in Tehachapi. It's a straight-out contest: furthest landing point wins, after applying a handicap based on the glider model. I've flown cross-country in that area before, but not beyond Silver badge distance, so this will be a challenge, but I think I'm ready for it. There's a lot to do to prepare. Here's some of what I've done. Some of this may be overkill, but I want to be safe - I'm doing this for fun!

• Crew One of my fellow club members, N, will be the retrieve crew. I was hoping to get two, but the contest is the weekend right after a club campout, and few are willing to go out two weeks in a row. I worried about this for a while, but N and J assured me that we should be fine with 1. The PW5 is light enough for two people to disassemble.
• Navigation I've loaded up my PDA with the latest airspace and map files, and loaded waypoints / airports / landout sites for the region. The region 12 web site has a list of landout sites contributed by pilots, so I've pulled a bunch of those too. Then I have built a task consisting of the sequence of waypoints and landout sites I am likely to use.
• Backup Since I don't want to be totally reliant on the PDA, I have prepared printed info on each of the landout sites, with runway info and aerial images from Google Earth. I'll take them along on a kneeboard in case I need them. Copies of them will be in the truck as well. Also, I got sectional charts for the rest of the area where I'm likely to fly.
• Communication I got more familiar with the radio in the PW5, since I may need to get on various frequencies for different airports and AWOS's. No one in the club had really programmed its memories. I'll take along my handheld radio as a backup. N will take his handheld in the truck, and I'm getting a magnetic-mount antenna for the roof.
• Emergency comm I've bought a 406 MHz Personal Locator Beacon, the smallest I could find. It'll strap onto my parachute.
• Ground navigation Last year I got a very good, large-format road atlas that even shows dirt roads. I've marked some of the landout sites on it - need to do the rest.
• Landout/emergency kit I think I talked about this before... I have a bag with a lot of survival gear, along with stakes and ropes. It fits under the seat and weighs about 3 pounds.
• Water I had a 1.5 liter Camelbak, but I have found that I can go through that in a 2 to 2.5 hour flight. So I just got a second one that's 2 liters.
• Badge planning I should certainly be able to do Silver distance and altitude, possibly duration as well. I need to do a little more planning to make sure my likely distances and elevations are acceptable. Gold distance is not a possibility this time - I'm not planning to go past Bishop, and that's not far enough.
• Equipment and supplies I have an extensive checklist of stuff to take, so I don't forget something dumb like chargers for my radio and cell phone.
• Preparation I plan to take a couple of days off before the contest. Thursday I plan to drive to many of the airports and landout sites along my route. Friday I plan to fly in the local area around Tehachapi just for practice and familiarity.

Air-to-air photography

One of our club members, J, just bought an ASW-20. Since it was a pretty good day for soaring, we decided to try to take some pictures of his first flight. I've taken some general scenery shots with my digital point-and-shoot camera, but it doesn't zoom close enough for really good images. And managing my digital SLR is not something I want to tackle when flying. Flying formation to take pictures really takes two. So L and I teamed up in the Grob 103. I flew from the front seat, and L was in the back with my camera.

We launched about 13:15 and I let off tow at 2300' AGL (3800' MSL) in some OK lift. It wasn't really strong - about 2kts, enough to sustain - but it was small and hard to work. L took over for a while and demonstrated that I need to tighten my bank to work smaller lift. I was only banking about 30 degrees, and not staying within the thermal. He worked us up a ways and then I took over and flew the rest. Later, in another thermal, we found some really good stuff, I think up to 6.7 kts. We got as high as 7000' MSL, went over to the "S" ridge and found nothing, came back and got set to take pictures.

We took a few of what we thought was J's glider - we didn't have good radio contact yet - from some distnace away. My radio stopped working (I think the rechargeable battery is bad), and I could not hear L's conversations. Later we met up with T in one of our Blaniks, and got a few decent pictures but not from really close up. I don't think T was on the radio, so we kept our distance since we were not really coordinating our directions.

It's challenging to try to maneuver my glider into a good position for the photographer to get a good angle, and keep a safe separation, and work the thermal so we can stay up, and keep a good lookout. In the case of the Blanik, our speeds were often quite different. I imagine that in a pair of power planes this would be a little easier because you could fly straight and level for longer periods. It worked out pretty well after a little practice and thought. Sometimes we would have to turn away in order to work lift, and come back later for another set of pictures.

Our Grob 103 has a new canopy which is tinted blue. That affected many of the pictures. Eventually L pointed the lens out the vent and took most of the pictures that way. (That's got to be hard - the vent is pretty low. I need to ask him about that.)

J finally launched, and I was wondering where he was... remember I did not have radio. Suddenly L said something from the rear seat about him being above us, and I was surprised to find that I had not seen him. Maybe he came in from behind at a higher speed? Anyway, there he was, and I kept a close eye on our separation from that point on.

We circled together for quite a while, and L took lots and lots of pictures. I had set up the camera with the basic 28-80mm lens and a 2x teleconverter, so he had some zoom to work with without getting too close and shaky. (Autofocus sometimes has trouble with my bigger lens, and I wanted to ensure we got some decent shots.) And here's one of the best:

We came back to join J again and found that there were two hang gliders in the same thermal. We flew with them for a while and took a few pics of them... nothing worth posting. Then we flew over the airport to watch J land. That was interesting... he and a 2-33 got into the downwind leg at the same time, just about parallel to each other. J extended his downwind to give the 2-33 room to land first, then came in and landed on the runway to avoid a conflict. No big deal, but not something that happens every day. We cruised around to lose altitude, and then ended up with a total flight time of 1 hour 52 minutes.

An OK flight on a hot day

I took a flight in the PW5 on Saturday. With the monsoon weather, I thought there might be some CU to mark the lift, but all the CU were up higher and on the other side of the mountains marking orographic lift. Down in the valley, it was too dry for the thermals to generate clouds. I think it was about 100F when I took off. I let off in lift at 4200' MSL and worked up as high as 5900'. There was lift, but it was ragged and hard to center, and turbulent. (It wasn't just me, others on the radio were mentioning it as well.)

It made it hard to control my speed well. I want to double-check the recommended speeds for thermaling in both the PW5 and the Grob 103 to make sure I'm not flying too slow... sometimes it's hard to tell whether I'm hitting wind effects in rough thermals, or feeling stall buffet and slightly falling out of my turns. I want to practice some turns in still air next time and see how they feel.

I passed just under a hawk. He was heading the opposite way, so we were moving very quickly relative to each other. He (she?) was white underneath with black or brown spots, not a Red-Tailed Hawk.

I got high enough to fly over to the "S" ridge, which is I guess 6 or 7 miles from the airport. But then there was nothing working on the ridge, so I came back and joined a thermal underneath A. in one of our Blaniks. Then I flew around for a while and did not find any significant lift, though it was probably still working. It was pretty warm up there... I did not get high enough for it to really cool down. So when the lift petered out I came down, hot and a little tired after an hour and 20 minutes of bumps.

My IPAQ shut off again during this flight, and this time it was strapped to my leg, which negates my vibration theory. I guess it must be heat getting to it. Turning it on did not resync it with the GPS in the Volkslogger. I had to stop and start SeeYou, and then it hooked up right away. But I imagine it broke my flight into two files. This is not good - I don't know what else I can do to keep the unit cool.

I worked on improving my approach planning, paying more attention to the wind direction and its effects on each leg of the pattern. It was important today because the wind aloft was from quite a different direction than the AWOS was reporting. I also paid more attention to giving radio calls during each phase of the approach, something that we are pretty lax about at our field. (It seems that's the part that I forget if things get busy during the approach.) That was also important today, because there was another glider about 30 seconds behind me in the pattern. I knew he was an expert - we landed close together a couple weeks ago, too - but I wanted him to be clear on where I was.

All in all, a good flight - but I had to work for it.

Soaring with TVs

No, not televisions... turkey vultures. Although I've seen them from a distance, I've never had the opportunity to fly with them until today. (Hawks and seagulls, but not TVs.)

Today I flew the PW5... it was not a really strong day but had potential. Another pilot told me roughly where he had found a decent thermal, so I headed that way. I was in weak lift and saw a dust devil some distance away but didn't want to go that far. Then I spotted two vultures just a short distance from me, maybe a quarter mile, right at about my altitude. At that point I was at about 4000' MSL.

I headed toward the closest TV and got into lift. I turned in a direction that would hopefully keep us close but circling the same way... birds aren't bound by the same rules as gliders! He wasn't exactly circling, so we kind of moved about each other. Sometimes he would half-fold his wings and drop down, other times he would outclimb me. After about 3 or 4 "turns", he kind of cut across about 50 feet or less from the nose of my glider. He looked back, seemed startled, and then dove away and was gone. I never saw him or the other vulture again. But I worked that thermal up to 6600' MSL, and then took off across the valley. So thanks, Mr. Turkey Vulture.

I flew over to the Ramona Bowl, then skirted Diamond Valley Lake, most of the way over to Winchester. I never found any more lift, just some moderate sink. I ended up with a 56-minute flight. And no one on the radio reported getting any higher than I did - the other pilot got to 6300'. So I guess I did OK for a marginal day.

My PDA cut out just a few minutes into the flight. It turned itself off. After I turned it back on, it never got any GPS data from the Volkslogger - I think SeeYou reverts to wrong serial port settings. That won't do! It did this on my last flight, too. I think it's probably caused by vibration, since I'm now mounting the PDA on an arem connected to the instrument panel. It could be heat, but if it was heat I would have expected it to fail earlier, before I got up to a cooler altitude. So next time I'm going to try strapping it to my leg again. I think I can see the screen better that way anyway - it's closer to me than when it's on the arm.