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Something a little different this month. First, some quick announcements, then a soaring story from September of this year. And, in my humble opinion, the club is more about the soaring story then the announcements. Annual Membership Meeting will be held Thursday, November 18 at 7p.m. at Chevy’s which is located at 7475 S. Union Park Boulevard (1300 East). We will be served a buffet, for $12.99 per person. Drinks will be additional. Please plan to attend, as we will be electing new board members for 2000. Glider Disassembly Day was a terrific and terrible day. Terrific because we had a good turnout and lovely weather. Terrible because we had a lovely day for flying and lots of people who wanted to fly! Still, my appreciation to all those who turned out. Also, the insurance on the Grob and the 1-34 will be continued through the end of November. We are trying to organize a group to do auto tow launches out of Nephi. Please contact Walt Konecny or myself for more information if you are interested. Fall BBQ was a great success. Many thanks to Matt Zimmer for organizing and doing most of the preparation work. Also, thank you Russ McDonald for the air show in your P-51 Mustang. REMINDER SSA Dues DON’T PANIC when you see a bigger invoice next month!!! It’s time to renew your SSA membership. As has been done the past few years, USA will pay the renewal fee and bill the individual USA members on the December 1 invoice. Members who have joined the club this year should contact and give Karl Wernick (524-3222 or 942-1732) your SSA member- ship number and the month you joined. Karl will then contact SSA to pro-rate the year 2000 member- ship dues so they come up for renewal in January 2001. Any USA members not wishing to renew their SSA membership need to contact Karl by November 22. Renewing your SSA membership this way benefits the club by reducing the cost of insuring the gliders. Thanks for your help! Y2K Status So far none of the club gliders have been Y2K certified yet. We are currently working with the sailplane manufacturers as well as the insurance company To the best of our understanding the worse case scenario is that if the fixes are not completed in time, or are ineffective in nature, the sailplane’s performance values will return to year 1900 specifications resulting in LID ratios of approximately 10:1. (The towrope will also turn into a bungee cord.) Aircraft Maintenance The 2-33 needs to have the wings stripped and then taken to Morgan for painting. Members wishing to participate, as I am sure you all are, are welcome to call me for details. Also, people with facilities, i.e. space, running water and electricity, are highly desirable as well. Grob Trailer Big thank you’s to Walt Konecny and Lee Steorts for rescuing the Grob trailer in October. The wheels and brakes were cleaned up after several years of neglect, and the lid (upper clamshell) was patched and repaired in numerous places. The Grob now has a nice dry place to winter this year. And, oh yeah, check out those hot new wheel hubcaps! A Soaring Flight Saturday afternoon, September 11, 1999. It is a beautiful sunny afternoon at the Heber Airport. Heidi Alley has been working hard all day washing sailplanes. She has done an excellent job on the Grob washing the exterior, vacuuming the interior and cleaning the canopies. She’s earned my vote for the Duty Officer of the Year Award. Walt Konecny and I are getting ready to take the Grob up for the afternoon. Jack Corneveaux is already out at the staging area with his Mosquito (Tango Juliet); Chris Haerter is setting up to tow up behind us in his Mosquito (Kilo Lima). Dave Lane has the unofficial role as sniffer as he has already been up once in the 1-34 (Bravo Whiskey). He tows up again immediately in front of us. Walt and I follow, getting off the ground at 1:44 p.m. behind Lyle in the Pawnee. There are nice clouds over the Wallsburg Valley and extending out towards the Uintas, as we release at 8200 feet a mile or two north of the Pines on the Wallsburg Ridge. Working moderate lift gets us to 9000, but the clouds are clearly suggesting stronger lift south of the Pines. We head off that way and soon find rising air going up at 6-8 knots. Bravo Whiskey is a little further down the valley and reports that he is higher. Tango Juliet is already out by Timber Lakes to the southeast. Chris (KL) is quickly released over the ridge to the north and we now have four planes up in the air. In the Grob, Walt and I are topping out near cloud base at around 13,500, and diving with spoiler deployed to get clear. It is the largest working cloud I have seen in a while and pegs the vario repeatedly. With Chris in the air, we switch over to 123.3 for communications. Chris is feeling a little excess drag on his ship, and is concerned about loose tape or an open wheel door. We pull out into clear air and pull spoilers for Chris to catch us After a few minutes of maneuvering, Chris does flyby to our right and we check him over for any thing amiss. Nothing appears to be out of place and everyone continues on. By now, Fred is up in his Pilatus, and by George we have an authentic gaggle. The first true gaggle I have seen in a couple of years. Under the same cloud, Fred is at the top, followed in close formation by Chris Haerter, one of the few pilots in the club I would trust with this maneuver. Walt and are below and trailing the two of them. Across from us is Dave Lane in the 1-34. I am groaning for not having brought my camera. The shots of gliders passing over and under us are just incredible. Soon, Chris lights out for the East to go chase Jack with the intention of visiting the Uintas. couple of minutes later, Fred slips away to do the same. I fell asleep and didn’t see him sneak off. work a couple more turns under the cloud to get over 12,000 and can’t wait anymore to join the departed pack, and head the Grob out toward Daniels and the Timber Lakes beyond. We endure 6-knot sink for a couple of minutes but then reach: the next clouds at about 11,000 feet, near Current Creek peak. A small brown knoll looks promising for lift as the clouds aren’t helping, and soon w are climbing well. I feel a twinge of ego when hawk joins us, as usually it is the other way around. The lift intensifies, and Walt points out the cloud that is forming overhead. That large wonderfully stable cloud over Wallsburg is left for Dave to enjoy. Chris and Jack work out to the Uintas, but wit difficulty. Jack reports cloud bases at 14,500, but only one cloud out of three is working. Chris is trying to make the jump to the Uintas, but a large blue hole defeats his first couple of attempts. We are working some clouds a little bit northwest of Current Creek peak (southeast of the Timber Lakes) and Fred is under the same clouds but further northwest. There is a nice cloud street running northwest to southeast to the east of Kamas, but the blue sky in between is to large to jump in the Grob. Our option is to work towards Fred, skimming east of Timber Lakes. In the process of doing so we meet up with Fred again. Meanwhile, we pick up Lynn Alley on the radio. Lynn is flying his Duo Discus out of Morgan, about 50 miles to the north of Heber. And Heidi has joined our local circus in the 2-33 (88 Sierra) after performing her duty officer duties marvelously. Lynn expresses his desire to try for Heber. Heidi gives him a report on the pretty fall colors already out on the slopes. Dave reports in that he is trying for Terrace Mountain to the west of the airport. Walt has the radio in the back seat and has unofficially assumed the role of ATC. I keep eyeing the cloud street east of the Kamas valley with not a little bit of lust. Our clouds peter out at the bottom of the Kamas valley as we head northwest. There are wisps forming, but we only complete one or two turns before they disappear into sink. A faint trail of wisps was evident a little while earlier running east to the Uinta foothills, but by the time we got to where they started, they had vanished completely. We have been flying for a couple of hours by this time, listening to Jack and Chris wandering out by Mirror Lake, yet we were still within easy reach of the Heber airport. It was time to make a bolder effort. We were getting up to 14,000 under clouds at the south end of the Kamas valley. Ten miles to the east the cloud street was holding nicely. We needed one good thermal to make the jump. I turned the Grob east along the track where the wisps use to be. We find moderate sink and occasional weak lift, so we continue in the same direction. About a third of the way across to the clouds we hit a nice blue thermal which gets us well over 13,000. Now the cloud street is in reach, and if nothing is working there, we have the ability to final glide back to the airport. It is an all or nothing type proposition, unless we get lucky scrambling, or you are Walt and you make your own luck. We are soon over the Mirror Lake highway, and the second cloud we sample is working well. Clouds are present to the east, not in any particular street pattern, but there is an obvious stepping stone pattern that makes Mirror Lake obtainable and we proceed with that as our goal. Lynn, meanwhile, has pushed 18 miles away from Morgan but reports nothing but blue sky ahead. From our perspective, there are no clouds from Park City to the north for 20 miles. It doesn’t look promising for Lynn. Heidi is doing well in 88 Sierra, but is getting a little chilled. Someone needs to do something about the drafts in that glider. Jack and Chris have gone silent, but both appear to have left the Uintas. Dave reports that he has run out of time in the 1-34 and returns to Heber. John Mildon takes the 1-34 up next, but we never did raise him on the radio. Around 4 p.m. we reach the Mirror Lake area. About half of the clouds are providing good lift, and the bases have risen to a little over 15,000 feet. We set up camp there for the next hour. Walt has me work on technique trying to climb above the trailing edges of the clouds. I have read about this and talked to people who have done this and have tried to do it myself before. But, as before, I am unable to climb over any of the clouds. Eventually we move 6-7 miles east of Mirror Lake, flying over Rocky Sea Pass on the Highline trail, a pass I did the hard way four years ago with my Dad backpacking. In the process of thermalling over this pass under a productive cloud, I failed to register the significance of buffeting every time we came around to the west edge of the cloud. The significance becomes clearly apparent in a few minutes. Heidi is working now on making two hours. She is doing well and hasn’t gotten ill (to the best of our knowledge). Lynn resigns himself to not making Heber. Jack pops up on the radio, flying in the vicinity of Heidi. Chris apparently has landed. Unbeknownst to us, Dave Robinson, Chris’s partner in the Mosquito, has taken off in Kilo Lima. After a couple of turns a glance to the west shows that the between between Heber and us are disappearing. At forty miles from the airport it is time to get a little closer to home. We reach the plateau west of the Duchesne river and work lift there. But, by the time we reach 14,000, we are back near the Duchesne River. After repeating the cycle it is obvious that the wind has picked up considerably at altitude (the buffeting clue previously ignored), and our task has gotten a lot more interesting. And while there are still some clouds running up the west side of the Duchesne, there is only one cloud left between us and Heber that has the promise of getting us the needed lift to make it back. I worked the clouds to the west trying to gain altitude while making a little progress towards Heber, but soon these give out. It is time to make a jump for the sole cloud, a distance of at least five miles with a head wind. Walt, thoroughly enjoying himself in the back seat, points out the innumerable lakes reflecting the sunlight off to our right. We reach the cloud at 11,400 feet. It is clear that even Kamas is not reachable from this location without further lift, and our primary alternative becomes the Duchesne trench, with the idea of working the east side of the trench for thermals or ridge lift and getting lucky or else head further south for Hanna and landing out. Heidi reports that she needs 15 minutes for two hours and that she is at 11,500 and climbing in a thermal. She has it in the bag. Way to go Heidi, well done! Fortunately, the cloud still has good lift. Walt reminds me to work this very efficiently as even though we are climbing nicely, we are still drifting back towards the Duchesne. We get to 14,000 feet again and the world looks a little better. We head off for the Heber valley at 60 knots. It is now 5:18 p.m. The sun is reflecting off Deer Creek reservoir and we have a gorgeous homing beacon. The sky starts smoothing out. We even find light little pockets of light lift. Nineteen minutes after departing the last cloud, we reach the beginning of the Heber Valley at 11,200 feet. There is a nice cloud street over Daniels canyon running towards Strawberry. At 5:40 p.m., four hours into the flight, Walt takes over the controls. We head down the canyon over Route 40, smoothly working up to 13,500 feet. Now, the sun is reflecting off Utah Lake, well to the west. The lake surface has the appearance of a glowing cumulus cloud sitting in the evening sun. Just before reaching Strawberry reservoir, the cloud street ends, but the start of parallel street is available to the south a mile two away. We make the transition, and move out over the reservoir. At about 25 miles from the air port, the street ahead shows hanging tendrils, an even though it extends down beyond Soldier Creek, this is as far as we can proceed in this direction. We crank around and the clouds that once were over Daniels have drifted to the east and are clearly shrinking. Out over the Uintas it is completel clear with the exception of a huge cumulus over the east end of the Uintas rising from behind the horizon. There is one small cotton ball cloud over the Wallsburg Valley, but it dissipates before we are half way there. We returned to the bottom part o the Wallsburg valley, where Walt finds a 6 knot thermal on the ridge across from the oil platform It is 6:30 p.m., and we are soon over 13,000 fee again. From here, we cruise off the ridge passing to the East of Heber and head for the South side of Deer Valley. The sink has all but disappeared and the air is turning silky smooth. There is usually a nice thermal between Midway and Deer Valley off a rocky outcropping at about the 9200 foot level. But, upon reaching it at 10,000 feet it is clear that it is too late to get anything from it tonight, and we are too low to get over the hill to Park City. We cruise back across the Heber valley to the ridge, finding some weak lift from south of the point onwards. However, at the Pines it is heavy sink and we get down below 8000 feet. What is a flight with Walt if you don’t get low on the ridge for an up close and personal tour? We work back up the ridge and soon Walt is working the weal stuff we found before. Unfortunately, he needs to pull up in it cycling me through 2.5 g’s every time which, with a full bladder among other things, I find a little uncomfortable if not outright difficult. For Walt’s part, his bladder has been screaming at him for the last 2.5 hours. Returning to the valley, we fly over the airport. The reason for the heavy sink at the Pines now becomes obvious. The wind is blowing out of the north at 8 knots. So it’s obviously time to go check the Daniel’s side of the ridge. There is some lift there but it needs to be worked carefully. It is now after 7 p.m. and Walt’s bladder won’t let him focus enough to work the lift. My bladder is giving his bladder moral support. We head back to the valley, letting the excess altitude dissipate. But even in the shadows of the Wasatch we encounter weak lift and the Grob seems to hover instead of loosing altitude. Finally, we reach 6500 feet and Walt starts his pattern for runway 3 with a slight crosswind from the north. We come to a stop at 7:19 p.m. at a mostly deserted airport, for a totally enjoyable 5.6 hour flight. What an incredible day of soaring for a mid-September afternoon. Parke Byron 1999 Board Members Parke Byron, President 582-7802 |