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Hangola
Sunday April 12, 1998

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

It's been since last September since I've enjoyed flying as much as I enjoyed flying today! With all the cold of the winter and all the turbulence of the spring, well, today was a refreshing change!! All blue (no clouds), got to 4600 over launch. The air was pretty pleasant to 4K, over that it became uncomfortably turbulent (for me). Got flushed after an hour and a half, flew a second time for :25, also very pleasant. Wished my vario was functioning on that second flight, though! A wonderful day.

Tom McG and Mike Balk exceeded my flight in both altitude and duration; Skip Brown got high. Many others flew.

A sled and an extended sled for me at the Sac on Saturday; Geoff flew twice as well.

Judy

Kevin and Kelly flew the Rock again. Kelly scored 25 minutes, avoided many of the sinkholes, and flew without a vario. Her previously arranged observer, me, got the fever and jumped off the cliff before her. Many thanks to George for seeing her off launch safely, and for that matter, seeing me off launch too.

I launched third, behind Tom, who followed Judy. I've had better launches. Getting up took a little patience and a bit of work. Once up, the thermals seemed to be taking us too far back which reminded me of the day before. I hate blowing-off a nice thermal because I'm too far back (P40). Anyway, I decided to play in the valley to see what the drift was there. Pretty good apparently. I nailed 32.2 contest miles (love those doglegs) and landed at the foot of Sugarloaf 2:48 minutes into my flight. I thermalled with birds, and sailplanes. Don't know who the pilots were. One sailplane had #34 on the tail. Topped out at 6400msl near Burkittsville with a sailplane. Got close enough to the Potomac river at the right angle to see Weaverton Gap, and the Bridges in Harpers Ferry and Brunswick. I also saw Lilypons Water Garden for the first time as it should be seen; from directly overhead! Cool. Landed along Ira Sears Rd just to the west of Sugarloaf Mountain. Landowner asked me if I wanted to "Slam a Dew". Seeing as how this wasn't West Virginia, I graciously accepted.

-Kevin Madden

*** long story alert - 1 written page ***

980412 High Rock to Sugarloaf XC flight notes

Purdue MOS charts for Dulles and Pittsburgh airports almost pulled me to Fischer but the visible light North wind kept Kelly and me at the Rock. I still prefer the OSU wind vector chart. Conflicting wind predictions abound. The hint of a potential east prediction for the afternoon had a few pilots planning their holy-grail of valley crossings from HIGHrock to the Pulpit. Peak heating for the day looked to be at or after 3pm. Thermal indexes indicated Dulles -3 to 2500ft and Pittsburgh -3 to 7000ft. I wanted off the hill around 1pm, conditions permitting.

I launched at 12:48 into mild right cross. A few minutes patience and work were rewarded by a workable thermal that took me up and back.

Lift on the ridge was drifting fast over the back into P40. I didn't feel like diving for the next thermal. Lately, I've had notoriously bad luck to the point where I'm getting leery of diving anywhere without really, really good cause. Instead, I opted to fish way out front for lift that wouldn't be on its' way directly over the hill so fast. Lift out on the flats seemed to be slowly drifting straight down the valley. My GPS shutdown due to low batteries 222 degrees 6.6 miles from launch. This constituted my first leg. The GPS III has an awesome track record of this leg of the flight. My flight path for this leg was almost exclusively to the west of the 6.6 straight distance leg. Definitely flying on the flats and didn't get anywhere near the ridge until south of Alt-40. My flight path took me west of Smithburg, directly over Cavetown, straight down Rt66, downwind past three rock quarries with three nicely wrapped thermals (better than any Easter egg hunt I've ever been on), and across 70 at the Rt66 intersection. It was completely cool looking from the air - way better than I had imagined. Above 3000msl it was nice smooth cruising. Below 3000msl it became increasingly difficult. I got low a few times, but those quarries we're really nice to me. And their spacing is right-on. I plan on visiting them again soon.

Pretty much stayed over Rt66 past Greenbrier State Park, over Boonsboro, then South on Rt67. The next few miles seemed to indicate that the thermals were drifting almost directly east over the mountain. Despite my best effort to track south, I finally figured-out that it was time to cross over to the next valley east. I crossed over South Mountain south of Alt40 a bit. Once on the lee side, I sank, picked a field, unzipped, then found lift. Finally got above ridge, flattened out my turns a bit, and drifted with the thermal across the valley. The thermal picked up north of Burkittsville near Arnoldtown and I topped out at 6400msl with a sail plane there. I drifted with this until about half way across the valley.

I crossed the Catoctin Mountain in the gap where 180, 340 and 15 intersect. Got low, picked a field, unzipped, and found another one on the lee side that I took to around 5K. This is where I believe I made "the mistake" that had me kicking dirt soon later. I was now, for the first time EVER, within gliding distance of Sugarloaf. Target/Coolness fixation set in, the nice rock face facing the sun, climbed it many times on foot, dreamed of flying there more. Daydream was soon shattered by sink followed by more sink. I landed at the foot of the mountain and enjoyed the view just long enough to see a cume forming just southwest of me. I believe that I fixated on the Sugarloaf-dream when I should have minded my altitude and followed the lift closely and more to the south. Safe, wonderful, and fulfilling flight. Plus a lesson too!

Launched 12:48pm from HIGHrock: N39d 41.722', W77d 31.374'
Turnpoint 222d 6.6 miles from launch: N39d 37.446', W77d 36.389'
Landed 3:34pm, west of Sugarloaf: N39d 16.855', W77d 25.417'
Flight time: 2:48, straight distance: 29.1mi, w/Turnpoint: 6.6 + 25.6 = 32.2mi
Max altitude: 6393ft
Above launch: 4769ft
Peak 20sec average lift: 792fpm
Peak Instantaneous lift: 1929fpm

-Kevin Madden

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

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This page last updated April 19, 1998