The Team Challenge: He Says-She Says

Larry Ball's recollections

As "I" remember it I made goal every day and won the meet. "Memories are but fleeting dreams:", I think somebody famous quoted that line somewhere at sometime. But I do know that reality sucks just like my flying did.

Sat. is socked in, rainy, and the whole team piles into Mark's shuttle draft and we head to Lookout Mountain Flight Park to check out anything new in the store and then went down to the LZ to check out the new bunkhouse, which was equipped with male, female and coed bunks with showers, a lounge with books, board games, cards, air hockey and two pool tables, which Mark and Steve make use of as the rain pours down.

Sunday dawns extremely foggy but clears by noon, but a weak high pressure center is setting right on top of us and everybody sleds. Curly Dunn test flies a new Moyes CSX that I will fly tomorrow and waffles it around all the way to the ground. Says it was just PIOs and would take a little getting used to.

Monday, it has blown hard all night (like just about every night) from the east and this morning it is still blowing with cloudbase just above the trees. Forecast for S-SE 5-10 we head for Whitwell. 10:00 AM and cloudbase is up to 1000+ over launch but still cloudy, wind is 30* cross at launch. Nobody wants to set up because it looks like it will rain, but the Sty Skuds pull out their mighty wings and start setting up. The forecast for the next three days is more of the same so the team from New York decides to head on down to Wallaby Ranch for a few days and leave. An hour later the sun starts breaking through and the rush is on to set up. The wind picks up but still cross but there are cycles coming in. I am the second person to launch but find the CSX impossible to keep from oscillating from side to side, which is not fun close to the trees so I head out to land. Rather than take a reflight on this glider I drive retrieval. Doug and Steve make just past the first gap for almost five miles. Mark makes goal at the intersections of 111 and 128 and Sheila makes to the first gap and lands out by the main road instead of flying downwind.

Tuesday more of the same as Monday and I have my own glider now. Again I am one of the first to launch with Steve right behind me. It is easily soarable around launch, 500 to 800 over, but gets harder as you head north on the ridge. I can not understand Steve at all on his radio and I lose track of him as more gliders invade my air space. I see other gliders down the ridge maintaining so I venture on down and run into my best thermal yet as I hear Mark, Doug, and Sheila on the radio. Mark is trying to get Sheila to thermal up with him and Doug. I tell Doug to come on down to me and we join up and head to the first gap where Doug finds 400 up out in front of the ridge. I join him and we climb up to 2000+ over and head across the first big gap. I stop to work some light lift I find halfway across while Doug blazes on and is rewarded with a good thermal on the south facing point on the other side. I watch as Doug works the thermal for a bit. He doesn't seem to be climbing any better than I am, but he is climbing and he is ahead of me so I strike on over to him. I come in at 200 above him and start turning right, of course. Lucky thing I've been practicing right turns. I find the core a little more upwind of Doug and start climbing at 500 up and tell Doug to do the same. We climb good for a bit but Doug loses it and heads on, I get to cloudbase and move on also. We glide across the next small gap and the power lines without hitting a bump. We are getting low and Doug stops to work something but I see someone turning up ahead and go on and get drilled and have to land. Doug sees me getting drilled and hangs back but can't find anything to keep him up and heads out higher than I did so I tell him to go on down wind as far as he could. He makes it almost a mile further. Meanwhile Mark is trying to help Sheila get high enough to get across the first big gap. When she can't find the thermal that Mark is climbing in he decides to go while he could as it was getting late. He gets 2200+ makes it across the gap and only a couple miles short of Doug and I. Sheila keeps trying but finally gets tired and heads out to land, but this time she goes downwind and makes it over the five mile scoring minimum. Nobody can understand Steve's radio but we think he's somewhere near goal, which was Henson's LZ.

Wednesday it rained and we went downtown to Chattanooga, aquarium, ribs and beer, to Northland mall so Doug could buy a pair of shoes and then a movie, Bruce Willis in Armageddon, pretty good flick.

Thursday the forecast is N 5-10 and mostly sunny. It was N-NE 5-10 and scratchy. Doug, Sheila and I flew twice and couldn't get high enough to make the five mile limit. Steve and Mark tried and only got three. The task was the airport at the south end of the valley - 24.5 miles and a few made.

Friday the forecast is 10-20 but was N-NE 5-15 basically the same as yesterday but with more thermals, only going to 500-600 most of the time, then sink cycles with a bunch of gliders trying to stay in one little area on the right side of launch. Mark goes out and dukes it out with the crowd while the rest of us wait awhile. Should have went after the first flush as Mark finds someone climbing out over the LZ and he and a few others get out and make goal at Whitwell LZ. Doug and Sheila and I again struggle in the cross conditions and land in the LZ. That night Doug calls Christy who tells him that the forecast back home for Saturday is NW 10-15. The forecast for Henson's is NE 10. So I call home and confirm and then call Wayne Baker who agrees with the forecast so we decide to skip the last day of the comp and will head north to Big Walker Mountain at Bland, VA tomorrow. This will make the trip home a lot shorter.

Saturday we're up before daylight to pack tents and gear, grab a biscuit sandwich, stop for gas, four and a half hours later we are in Bland, VA getting something to eat, one hour later at launch and setting up our gliders at Big Walker. Conditions are good for Walker, 10-20 from N-NW. Randy Newberry, local contact, and Wayne Baker are already set up and ready as conditions back off to a good cycle but finds it a little difficult to get up. Then the paraglider heads show up and start laying out their bags on launch making us have to wait till they launched before we could go. But conditions were not all that great at the time anyway but they had no trouble getting up and Randy and Wayne were up good now. I move out to launch and plant roots waiting for the right cycle. Mark is getting impatient with me but you got to get it right at this launch or you will be doing bud samples in the brush below as Mark almost found out. I get above easily and climbing in a good thermal as Sheila launches and gets up. I direct her to where I am and get her to start circling instead of 180's and we do an aerial ballet to 1650 over. Doug and Mark get up and the next three hours we spend soaring this beautiful valley for several miles up and back getting well over 2K. Definitely this was the right call for the today. All and all this was a good hang gliding trip.

Sheila Boyle writes:

The Sty Skuds for the Team Challenge (Oct. 4-10) consisted of Larry Ball, Steve Krichten, Doug Wakefield, Mark Gardner and myself. Everyone arrived either Friday or Saturday and had the whole day Saturday to relax, set up camp at Henson's and get ready which worked well since it was raining and not flyable anyway. We checked out the store and bunkhouse at Lookout, and fortunately were in the bunkhouse watching Steve kick Mark's butt shooting pool when it started dumping rain. Then we headed to Sticky Fingers rib joint in Chattanooga.

Conditions for the entire trip were marginal and tough - socked in just about every morning - but we ended up flying everyday except for one. Each day started out with a pilots meeting and one person from each team forming a task committee, which would decide whether to fly Henson's (NW) or Whitwell (SE), and what the task (goal) was. Due to pilots in former competitions 'diving for dollars', flights under five miles didn't count for team points (the minimum distance used to be 3 miles). While waiting to launch at Henson's a lot of us entertained ourselves by playing with a litter of kittens that lived at the Club house. It was cool to see them run up behind a glider that was on launch. The rumor was that the "winner" would take the litter of kittens -we didn't wait around to see if that became reality.

The task on the first day of the comp was 18.67 miles from Henson's Gap to Sandifers Field. The day started out fogged in but finally cleared to SW at 10 and everyone (including Mike Barber) landed in the primary LZ. Monday's task was a little over 15 miles from Whitwell to Dunlap with S/SE 10-15 mph. Mark had a wonderful flight and made goal, Larry demo'ed a CSX Moyes topless and landed in the primary after experiencing difficulty flying the glider. Steve made it 4.85 miles even though he wasn't feeling good from high blood pressure meds he's on. He was checking in with a pilot who's a doctor every day for his alarmingly high readings. Doug made it 4.85 miles, landing in the same field as Steve after patiently coaching me to my first XC (even if it was only 3 3/4 mi.) The biggest challenge at the Whitwell site was making it across the gaps - about 7 other pilots also made it to goal. Needless to say, Mark had a difficult time getting his head through the door.

Tuesday it was back to Whitwell with a task down the ridge then across the valley with a headwind into Hensons's primary LZ for a total of 15.43 miles. I scratched for a little more than an hour but I was hurting from my new harness and finally gave up and landed for my second XC (thanks to coaching by Larry) with 5.85 miles. I ended up landing in the same field as Judy who was flying with a broken arm (!) Doug and Larry went together, going 11.41 and 10.98 miles respectively, making it past 3 gaps, about 2/3 of the way to goal. Mark went 10.17 miles. Steve Krichten made it farther than his 13.77 miles, getting really close to goal (the goal keeper saw him), but turned back to find a safe LZ. There was some discussion at the beginning of the day about not using Henson's LZ because it would be rotored but certain pilots wanted it. Mike Barber was the only one to make goal but almost tumbled his glider landing.

Wednesday it rained all day and we entertained ourselves by bumming around Chattanooga which is a lot cooler than I thought it would be. We had a discussion about what we think about when we're in the air and the funniest was Steve telling us that he usually has the theme from "The Greatest American Hero" running through his head.

Thursday it was N 5-10 and the site of the day was Henson's with Steve and Mark landing about 3 miles away and Larry, Doug and I landing in the primary after scratching for approx. an hour. A few others made goal.

Friday we were at Hensons's again for the N 10-20 forecast. Steve didn't fly Friday because he was struggling with the high blood pressure and ended up going home. Larry, Doug, and I landed in theprimary. After launching early and hanging out on the ridge through several sink cycles, Mark made it to goal again with a really impressive bit of flying after hooking up with Steve and Kathy Lee. It was a long time before we heard the end of "the beautiful aerial ballet" he flew with Kathy Lee. (Much akin to the aerial ballet I've heard much about with Claire Pagen).

On Saturday, with a firm hold on fourth place, we decided to escape the marginal North forecast and take our chances with a NW forecast at Big Walker (just south of Roanoke). Everyone had awesome flights of a couple hours with great landings in a technically challenging LZ which is a cleaner version (no rocks, fence) of the North Mtn. LZ. I was dreading landing but went over the approach at least a hundred times while I was in the air (along with, much to my chagrin, the theme from The Greatest American Hero running through my head - thanks Steve- urgh). The site is NW, 850' AGL with a long ridge and very shallow launch which is difficult in lighter winds (to which Mark can attest). We shared the air with quite a few paragliders and the annoyance of three sailplanes buzzing us.

As a first time participant I had a fantastic time and was thrilled with my first three XC's and really appreciated all the help from my team. Other than the crappy conditions most of the week - the most challenging part of the competition was making sure we stayed out of No Land Fields. There were designated fields that we couldn't land in due to irate landowners and if you landed in one of them your score for the day was null and void. Bruce Hawk and Dennis did a great job running the comp with both of them stressing safety throughout the week. It paid off with no injuries or incidents.