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Hangola
Saturday April 11, 1998

Kelly and Kevin flew HighRock today. The burnout zone is easily seen and pretty well defined due to the thin tree canopy. As soon as the trees turn green you probably won't be able to see the fire damage.

Kevin got 1:12 and according to his instruments:
2500 over launch, 743 fpm peak lift on 10 second averager, 2495 fpm peak lift(!) It was ratty at times, but 2495 fpm up?
Kelly got 0:15, 100 over, and her first high flight in over 8 months. She also had a giant smile in Emma's field.
Kelvin extendo'd and hiked up. Maybe we'll get a first hand report on how bad the hillside looks up close and personal.
Eddy Miller launched late and flew home from the looks of things.
Kurtis Kemerer scored above launch time in his first post-winter-hibernation flight.

Fun weekend and it's only Saturday.
-Kevin

Congrats Kelly!!!!!! Mucho aviation was committed at the Pulpit yesterday with several pilots having multiple flights and a slew of pilots going XC over the back, including: Steve Turner, Mike Chevalier, Joe Gregor, Gardinator, John Dullahan, Steve Krichton, Ben ? (from Ohio) and others. Many of us lesser mortals wanted to go over the back and it just wasn't happening; but we soared. Dan T. and I both launched between 4:30 and 5:00 and worked like dogs to get high enough to make the jump but the thermals were kinda ratty and the drift, if any, was down the ridge instead of over the back of it. There was a pretty severe North cross at times and it didn't turn NW until after 6:00. I wanted to be at least 3000 over and still climbing in a nice big thermal for my first real XC trip. But the best I could get was 2400 over. I got 2:15 and Dan got 2:30. But Dan was so psyched to go XC he blew off landing in the primary and flew out to Route 522 to land.

The twos (Karen, Dave Johnson and Craig) all soared at the end of the day after doing the usual wire crew for everyone else thing. Jackie George, Jim Strube, Keith Ford, Luke Thompson (also from Ohio) soared and Jim Dullahan and Steve Vogel had extendos earlier in the day.

If I missed anyone, please accept my apologies.

Matthew (oooh, I could use a neck rub, of Karen and Matthew)

Bacil also flew twice.

Wow, what a weekend!

For the second weekend in a row I continued a rather disturbing trend of ending up with the shortest xc flight of any pilots flying! Fortunately, they were still very fun flights in beautiful settings, so I still had a great time.

Saturday was a Cumberland day, and there was quite a crowd. I launched in the middle of the pack and almost couldn't get up, despite the fact JR, Homer and Pete Lehman had easily gotten up and already left. I managed to finally get to around 4,000 over and left, but did an absolutely crappy job of tracking and ended up on the ground after only 5.5 miles! Meanwhile, conditions had gotten even better, and I had a ringside seat in time to watch Marvin, Larry Ball and Christy go streaking by overhead absolutely skied out, looked like they were around 5,000 agl. Christy and Larry got about 28 miles, Marvin ended up somewhat shorter, although it was a pleasure to see him later with that "happiest pilot alive" smile on his face. Later we did a chute-packing clinic with Larry Huffman who was kind enough to stick around, even though he couldn't fly because of problems with his glider.

I spent sat night at the Homer homestead in Winchester, once again graciously hosted by J. McCallister and Marion. The silence in the country was deafening compared to my place in DC! Sunday was a tough call, but an early call to Larry H. gave me some hope that it was worth a try. Originally I was going to fly the South Peak with John and Nelson Lewis and Rich Lawerence, but after talking with Richard we decided to visit an east site called Flattop, which is right behind Daniel's up on the Blueridge.

All the way down on the way down I saw nothing but strong NW winds, and I felt this was a complete waste of time, but I was committed to delivering a harness to Rich. We met up near Daniel's, with John saying he would show up later after church, but he must have blown it off since we never saw him.

I almost left to go home because of obvious dumping winds, but agreed to at least look at the site since I had come so far. The site itself turned out to be absolutely spectacular, a shallow-slope launch atop a high peak which lords some 3,000 feet over Daniel's at Mnt. Parker. A very technical site with an 8:1 glide to the main, definitely not for the faint of heart. The winds were still dumping over the back, but had lightened up enough that we decided to set up. Sure enough cycles started to finally puff in enough that Nelson and Rich launched, and after an initial sink out they both scratched their way up. I launched last-- very nervously since the winds had naturally died on me. I got lucky and hooked one immediately to the left of launch, but took some time climbing out. By that time Rich and Nelson had already left, Nelson to the south and Rich out into the valley to the east he landed at the main.

I was overwhelmed by some of the most spectacular scenery I have ever seen flying on the east coast. Top of lift was near what Larry had predicted, I eventually climbed to over 6k over Skyline drive to an alltime east coast high for me of 9,141 msl. Since there was no obvious drift aloft I spent alot of time just site-seeing from my high perch above launch, although I eventually decided to try to head south to follow Nelson who was already far ahead of me, and it was getting late in the day.

This is not a classic ridge run like Woodstock or Jack's, but a very techical patchwork of ever-changing alignment peak jumping along the terrain of the Shenandoahs. Long glides over expanses of trees demanded thermaling as high as you could get, which fortunately was quite feasible, at least early on. I eventually caught up to near Nelson just past where 64 crosses the mountains to go to Waynesboro, but by that time things had shut down and we both were forced to go on very long glides out to lzs. Nelson actually backtracked a bit so he could land in a large field, and I decided to end the fight and land in the same field. 25.5 miles straight line distance, but one of the most memorable flights I've ever had. My thanks to everyone who helped make this a great weekend, it was nice to have flights where I just had alot of fun and didn't worry so much about getting only miles. But I had better get my act together soon, since many pilots are scoring great flights.

Special congrats to K. Madden, that's a very difficult flight that I've always dreamed of doing.

Marc

Well, I had a great time yesterday doing taxes and helping Doug clear some brush and trees off the lot we bought next door - in preparation for getting a workshop and carport built. Will these projects never end!?!

Saturday was even more fun. It was really light when we arrived at High Point in Cumberland, but cycles started coming in as we set up. Some of the guys had already launched, but Larry Ball had told me that he'd been downloading his vario records and studying the trends. He'd noticed that all his good flights from High Point had started around 3 pm so he was planning to launch around then. I thought this would be a good time to take Pete Lehmann's advice and I chose my man - I decided to pimp Larry Ball. Turned out to be the right choice.

I launched before Larry and got up with no problem, but then spent the next hour trying to get high enough to leave launch. I finally found a good one - Larry was already going up in it. Marvin joined us and when we got around 6K msl we were over the airport (over the back) and on our way. Marvin was ahead of us and getting low when he found a thermal within view of the big field where most of the pilots had gotten dumped on the ground. He tried his best to get back up, but the field (which was huge and had an easy ride back to Cumberland) was calling.

Larry and I continued to climb in the thermal. We finally left it around 6.5K msl, Larry leading, me pimping. Larry was trending east although the wind was blowing more north at that point. His path took him over the ridges, instead of following the Potomac River. He told me later that he never found the Potomac valley to work that well.

He found another one near the next ridge (I think it was near PawPaw, but if you want names, ask Larry) and we worked that up. I stayed in it longer than Larry, getting to around 7.4K msl. I could see Larry was heading for the next ridge between Rt. 9 and Rt. 522 (in WV) and was getting kind of low. The sink I encountered on my way to meet him was around 900-1000 down - practically the entire trip there.

I made it just as he'd found a little lift to circle in at the ridge. It wasn't easy to work and when I lost it and couldn't seem to find it again, I radioed to Larry that I was bailing over the back to land near the main road I could see there - along with some really nice big fields. I tracked south on 522 for a couple of miles in an obvious tailwind.

I had a perfect landing in a strong north wind (probably a thermal lifting up to the south since the wind died down to practically nothing 10 minutes later) right beside the road. I was 13 miles south of Berkeley Springs, right near the VA border, and in amongst a collection of houses, which according to my map, is called Ridge. I'd made 28.0 miles, GPS reading courtesy of our driver, Mark Fugate. (He's the pilot who wrecked his glider, his jaw and his elbow at Lookout last year and who announced he wanted to drive for us so he could 'stay in the sport'.) Total airtime was 2 hours 36 minutes.

Larry was able to get a little altitude (not much) and made it to about 3 miles south of Berkeley Springs for a flight of 28.6 miles. (At launch I'd found the batteries in my own GPS to be too dead to keep the thing on - and my radio battery was close to dead after I landed. Gotta remember to check these things!!)

After my flight last weekend at Woodstock, I changed my hangpoint a couple of notches forward and, boy, did that make a difference. On previous flights my arms got tired pretty quickly from having to pull in all the time on glides (noticed it particularly when Geoff and I boated out to Route 11 that Sunday). No problem Saturday.
Christy

It was an interesting day. Got talked into (and it wasn't hard) going with Gardinator. Watching the flags all the way to the Pulpit blowing N, then NE, than SE. Thought, what a waste. But it's blowing in stong at the Pulpit. Didn't understand that too well, but hey. Set up slowly to the not so gently rythm of a pounding headache (too many Bardo's handcrafted ales the night before?). Some people are getting high, but then a thick high cirrus moves in - great. Take launch at 3 pm or so to get my sled run in and 20 mins later I'm 3k over and committing to an over-the-back. Smooth air punctuated by reasonably strong thermals, cirrus notwithstanding. Curiously enough, the drift was minimal at altitude and after patiently taking 1 hour to make the church I got cold (no thermal underwear, no facemask, summer gloves, and 6k MSL) and impatient, pointed the darned thing, and ended up on the ground just W of Greencastle 20 mins later for a big 14 mi. But it beat the sled I was expecting, and Jim Dullahan was there with a beer before I carried to the edge of the road. Perfect!

Steve C. and Mike C. got 16 - 17 mi. Where did you end up John?

-- Joe

Jim and I got sleds on our initial flights at the Pulpit. I mistakenly left punchy thermals just south of launch, expecting to find more of the same towards route 16. Sank out real fast and soon joined Jim and others on the ground. Bacil, taking his second flight, was on the ridge with one of the visiting pilots from Ohio. The latter got high and went over the back (does anyone know where he landed)? Jim's friend from out of town took us back to launch where I suggested we make another attempt. Having trouble with a muscle spasm, Jim demurred, and I launched into a nice cycle right after Joe Gregor. Joe showed me a nice thermal a few hundred meters north of route 16 cut, though I initially had trouble hooking into the sustained core (found too much of the down air). After about ten minutes found a nice one and took it over the back at 1700 over in almost negligible drift. Hit big sink and it looked like I would come down close to Mercersburg, but about 1,500 over the ground blundered into another one with 200 fpm up; all the way to 4,350 over, where it was cold but still no evidence of much drift. A couple of miles on flew right over Mark Gardener walking his glider towards the road. At about 2,300 over hunted unsuccessfully for something over the big earth mound at Upton. At 1,000 over the ground, wrung about 500 out of a little one just before route 81; enough to get me about 1.5 miles beyond it for just over 18 miles and 1 hour 27 minutes. Saw Steve Crichten and Mike Chevalier getting low and setting up to land on the west side of 81. On the retrieve, ever the good Samaritan, Jim stopped by Mark G., Joe G., Steve C., and Mike C., dropping off the desired choice (beer, water, or soda). I was glad for the opportunity to pick up Mike on the way back, since he had retrieved me on my last two out-landings at Woodstock. Congratulations to all those who got extended flights or great mileage: Christy and Marvin at High Point, Kevin at High Rock, Karen C. and the guys from Ohio at the Pulpit.
John Dullahan

Time for my update. Saturday found Tom M., George P. and myself (Mike B) headed for Hog Back. We thought for sure this would be the best place. We were dropping Tom's car at the LZ, and it turns out that the land owner died 2 years ago, and his widow does not want us to land there due to liability problems. We have heard reports that the daughter thinks it is fine for us to land there. Hopefully we can resolve this, but for now, no landing at the Hog Back main LZ.

So since we couldn't fly there, and the winds were looking a little NW, we went to Woodstock. Guess what, it was coming in! Of course by the time we set up it had died off, and we had to wait for some cycles to come in. A hang 2 with paces to be pushed launch, and took a sled. When I finally launched, I must have picked a good cycle, because I was able to get 100 to 300 over. At launch we were wondering where the birds were. I found them soaring behind the ridge! Anyway worked one thermal to +3000', then didn't get anywhere near that high for the rest of the flight. 50 minutes with very aerobic thermals. George had a sled, and Tom had ~ 20 minutes. On the way back up, Tom promised that it would go magic (yeah right!), but when we got back to launch, it was magic! Tom & George flew again (I in my infinite generosity (really my arms were tired)) decided to drive. The two of them flew to the north end and jumped off for 1:30 magic air flights!

Sunday the three of us headed for the Rock. We were almost dragged by the flags to Bills or Fischer's but we decided to try our luck at the rock. While Kevin went XC, I stayed around getting high +4500 (says Judy ), flew circles inside a sail plane, and landed around ten yards from the cone in the LZ. 2:35 air time. George had another sled (along with a few other people), and I am not sure how long Tom was in the air, but probably close to two hours.

This marks my single best year in terms of air time, and one of the two best for cross country (I only have two years with cross country miles).

-Mike Balk

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This page last updated June 17, 1998