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Hangola
Sunday April 5, 1998

It's Tuesday afternoon, I've been chewed up in a meeting, been given two crap projects and handled three "because I'm the boss" buck passings shoved my way today. Including one assignment to track down who is still distributing SBA publications with an obsolete 800 number. It seems the old 800 number has been re-issued to a telephone sex operation (OK, Fink the number is 800-368-5855). Anyway, if this is my pennance for my flight on Sunday then WoooHoooooo!

Sunday was a great day. I didn't go far, but I got high and had fun. Sunday was a booming day punctuated by strong lift, strong sink, unintentional wingovers, slack wires, over the falls....what every new hang II should fly in once....just to prove they're lucky.

Anyway Tom M., Mike B., Mark C., Chris R. and I all arrived at launch at about the same time. We set up quickly and bailed off the mountain just as fast. Conditions early on were light thermally and generally pretty tame. However, as the sun heated things up things started to change.

The air turned ratty and punchy down low, but I was able to catch one just over the finger North of launch that beamed me up (850 fpm up on a 40 second average) to 5900 over launch. Not quite a record for me at Woodstock, but it was close. At least three people radioed me to see what I was going to do with all my altitude. Well I thought about running North, but all the gliders I saw to the North were floundering. I thought about running South, but again, everyone South of me was low. I thought about drifting over the back and seeing how far could go, but I'd only been in the air for 29 minutes (I looked at my watch) and I'm too much of an air hog to go over the back after only 29 minutes. So I decided to see what I could see. It'd been a while since I'd taken the time to just...enjoy the view. I wasn't disappointed. To the West I could see at least seven ridges into West Virginia, to the South I could see Massanutten Peak, to the East I could past the Skyline Drive and to the North I could see Winchester, VA. It was already a sweet day.

So I looked and gawked and practiced stalls and played with flying backward (at that altitude my ground speed was zero when my airspeed was 28 mph) and just generally enjoyed myself for the next 30 minutes or so. I didn't gain anymore, but I didn't drop below 5500 over either. Then as I approached the front of the ridge (I had drifted back to the second ridge and had been slowly working my way forward at an average ground speed of 3 mph) Mother nature decided to bitch slap me. At 5600 feet over launch, directly above the old launch I hit the meanest sink hole I've seen in a long time. I felt like Wiley Coyote going over a cliff in a Road Runner cartoon. My averager (set at 40 seconds) was reading 1100 fpm down when I finally burst out of the sink I had lost 4000 feet.

That was the start of the rowdy portion of the day. I could see five to ten other gliders in the same boat with me. One minute we were 1500 over and the next we were at ridge top level. Finally, I got into something decent with Cavanaugh and Balk near the North finger by launch. We worked it up from ridge level to around 1200 over. Three gliders at the same height in a small ratty thermal isn't for the faint of heart. At one point all three of us went negative at the same time as indicated by Mike Balks "Whooaaaa!" call over the radio which was similtaneous to the gut wrenching Kaaaaabam! of my side wires. After that the three of us bailed back out front and stumbled into a nice steady 400-500 up thermal that took all three of us up to well over 4000 above launch. At 4800 over launch we decided to take this one over the back. We stuck with our first thermal until we cleared the second ridge behind launch and entered into the valley just West of Skyline Drive. Our strategy was to work our way South toward Luray and try to find a way past the Blue Ridge. I got low about 8 miles North of Luray but found a ratty thermal at 2700 msl that Mike had just skirted the edges of as he flew crosswind and South down the valley. Mike's gambit didn't work and he was shortly forced to join the ground humans once more. Cavanaugh and I had a bit more luck. I stuck with my ratty little thermal and it finally turned on and got back up to 5200 msl. By that time Mark had joined me in the thermal and we were now bumping up against the Blue Ridge. We stuck with our original strategy of trying to work our way South and would catch a thermal, drift back into the Blue Ridge then run back out into the valley and South. This bump and run strategy worked for three additional thermals, but finally we hit a section of mountain that required us to fly directly upwind and then south...it was too much for me and I ended up getting low and was eventually forced to land. My landing was uneventful except to mention that the field I landed in was a mile long, a half mile wide and uphill into the wind......a no stepper. Of course I did have to walk 200 yards to the nearest road, but I didn't want to get into any rotor caused by the trees along the edge of the field ;-)

It turned out to only be a 10.2 mile XC flight, but we were over the back and thermaling for over an hour, not bad considering the obstacles we were trying to skirt. If this had been a Pulpit or Cumberland flight I think our mileage would have been a lot farther. At one point I went on a short downwind glide and was registering a ground speed of 51 mph.

Even though we didn't get far it was a great day and a flight in which I learned a great deal about coordinating my efforts with other pilots to search for and maximize lift.

Chris Robbins proved that he wasn't buried in cow shit somewhere by showing up with the truck and a cooler full of cold beer shortly after I'd finished breaking down. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Kelly and Kevin cancelled the KHK tow thing, and ended up at Smithburg as a last second decision. Kelly had 5 nice flights in moderately strong and cross conditions. I tried to soar, but only nibbled at the elusive lift ban. Had 4 flights. Other pilots: Ed Reno, H2-almost, and RC pilot Eddy Miller.
Stopped by High Rock and observed gusty conditions. Drove home.
-Kevin Madden

Ooooh! It was freight train city at launch when we arrive at about 2:30. John Middleton got off in a lull and it was over an hour before the next pilot, Charles Poland, launched. A little after 4:30, we got another lull and Jim Strube took off into a building cycle. But it didn't build into a freight train so I suited up and got off at about 5:00. I struggled in some really gnarly air until I found a nice fat thermal and climbed up to 5k over. I headed up to the second finger North of launch but then it went eerily quiet. Apparently it had started freight training again after I launched and the eerie quiet was a lull in which Dan T. got off in at 5:25. I headed back to launch and lost 2k but managed to find decent thermals all along the ridge and in the valley. After screwing around South of launch I headed North again and found the big Momma thermal and this time climbed up to 5100 over-- my highest ever. Meanwhile back at launch, Judy-Judy, Sheila and Craig each launched in the lulls between freight trains. As Judy-Judy had commented earlier to a pilot, it's either light or gusts. Craig wisely chose to get away from the ridge and found some thermals over the LZ and managed to get about 15 minutes. Mike Buckley, who hadn't flown in about 2 months, was the last man off and got about an hour at the end of the day. Karen had decided to bag it since it wasn't clear to her that the freight trains wouldn't stop rolling through. Ray ? was looking for his first mountain flight in a long time but also decided the conditions were too unstable to consider flying after his extended absence from the sport.. In addition, he had a single surface glider and he was worried about penetrating. I got 1:45 and decided to land since I was freezing my butt off at 5k over.

Matthew (did I mention that I got 5k over, of Karen and Matthew)

Fun flying yesterday at Woodstock. Just shy of 4 hrs and 6K over (still probably a grand short of cloudbase at 3:30).

Got to 5K over off the spine to the north of launch early and made a bee-line to the north. Thermalled with a sailplane at the towers and then almost sank out heading back south. I bailed on George's invitation to go over the back and decided to act on Lehman's observation that we need to practice our upwind flying. The valley was working pretty well and I almost made it out to 81.

When I decided to call it quits, I screwed up my approach; mis-managed my altitude and arrived high on my turn from base to final and then missed the right downtube when I tried a rapid transition from prone to upright. Got into a left turn and thought it was going to get really ugly. Managed to get it all straightened out again by the time I hit ground effect and landed fine but it could have been a cartwheel.

Hadn't flown in a few weeks and probably pushed my endurance limits a little too hard on a day I could have expected the LZ to be rowdy.

Where did everyone else end up?
-Geoff

I ended up visiting uncle Pete and Larry Huffman up at Templeton. A very interesting and challenging site which no doubt has greatly influences the skills of the local flying community.

I ended up soaring the river "canyon" for quite a while, generally getting beat up by the howling winds and pounding cores. I never did quite figure out how to stay with the thermals, and basically did a one thermal glide over the back for 7 miles.

Meanwhile, the locals all scored significant xc's, Larry got 54, I think Pete got around 60, and Mike Neumann and Eric Seivert got about 70 and 74 respectively. For those of you contemplating jumping to toplesses for the anticipated inherent advantage they might give you, it is interesting to note that the two top flights were scored by pilots flying an old hpat and K5. Skills are what its all about.

On that subject, I believe the over-all level of skill in their community is way beyond our mean, in part because of circumstances that force them to fly with precision. In some respects, I'm grateful for the opportunity to learn how mediocre my skills really are, not withstanding the limited ridge-run successes I've had. To put it bluntly, I believe we've become a lazy pilot community by virtue of the abundance of easy lift that we encounter on our higher ridges.

Marc

You may have heard that I experienced a rough landing after that great XC flight with George and Mike on Sunday... pounded-in, totalled a downtube, and looked like I sprained my wrist; M & G helped me break down, we got some ice for my hand after Chris arrived with the truck, then we chased Tom down and wound up at Pizza Hut for dinner. A great day!

Unfortunately, yesterday's round of x-rays revealed a break, so it looks like one bad decision is going to cost me the spring '98 flying season :(

I'll have a few choice observations about making conservative LZ selections during an XC flight, at our April meeting; don't want to get into it via email because typing one-handed takes so long...

on the first really good spring day, damn! guess I'll have to enjoy that flight for quite a while...

--mark cavanaugh

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This page last updated April 19, 1998