Utah Soaring Association October 2003 Newsletter www.utahsoaring.org

General Meeting The annual General Meeting will be November 13th, 7:00 pm, at the Shanghai Garden Restaurant, 188 W. 7200 S. We had a good turn out last year and accomplished many good things by vote of the membership. This year we have more possible changes to discuss and the Board would like your input. As the club grows and Heber changes we need to be looking to the future and be ready with needed changes. Please plan to attend and vote. - David Lane Heber Disassembly Day Our Grob Twin II and 1-34 will be disassembled in Heber, Nov. 1, starting at around 9:00 am. - David Lane Heber to Morgan in the 1-34 I've been thinking about this little jaunt for a couple years, and now that I've done it I can say with some certainty that I could have made it about a dozen times! As much as anything, mapping possible outlanding sites finally gave me the security to give it a go. My preparation included driving all along the valleys marking GPS coordinates near Kamas, I-40, Hoytsville, Henefer and Morgan. OK, so I'm no Sir Edmund Hillary. Oddly enough the day I finally went, July 23, didn't look all that great. I had told Gary just before launch that Morgan was still my goal, but the weather was really starting to close in. A cloud just west of Heber was spitting virga and a huge dark mass brewed over the Uintas. It was going to over develop, and the last of the blue holes over our ridge and the airport made them look like a big green stage with the house lights down. I climbed to 11,000' over the point and decided to see if the virga just beyond town was displacing warm air. The glide over was bizarrely smooth and I made it to the hills separating Heber and Kamas with about 500' of safety margin before I'd have to head back and land. Sure enough though, just as a few drops of rain hit the canopy I started going up. In short order I was at 13,000' playing around between two separate virga cells. One over Timberlakes and the other over Midway. The latter was

growing and I knew that if I went too far north I'd get really wet trying to return. Lynn was working on a nice triangle out of Morgan while his son slept in the back seat of the Duo. After I climbed through 14,000' above Park City, constantly judging whether or not I could make it back around the big curtains, I told him that the street all the way into Morgan looked pretty sweet and that I was gonna head his way. I flew directly over to the peak just north of the I-40/I-80 interchange where a big fat cloud promptly boosted me back to 14,500', and it began to look like this was far less of a deal than I'd made it out to be. One more good one east of Portville and this would be a quick fifty miler! Except for the sink. I dove out from under the Hoover I'd been working and promptly engaged plummet mode. About ten miles on I was down to 11,500' and starting to look furtively out to my field in Henefer. The huge cells above the Uintas had now coalesced into one big blue-grey mass and had pushed as far out as Echo Reservoir. I was now looking for lift at the edge of a very large system, and I found salvation just east of East Canyon Reservoir. All this time I'd been updating Lynn on my progress. Now he came south and we flew the remaining fifteen miles to Durst Mountain (east of the Morgan Airport) together. I must have been clenching something fierce because my butt was aching. Lynn flew on for another thirty minutes or so while I entered the pattern. At Aaron's suggestion I landed long, he caught the wing tip as I slowed to a stop and then graciously tolerated my hooting and hollering. - David Lane