Back Home

I flew for the first time today since returning home from Florida. Mark, Peter, and Rodger met at my place and then we drove the 2 hours to Morningside to drop off PK’s glider for repairs. From there we zipped over to Ascutney where we found all kinds of trucks and cars with racks at the bottom. Jeff and Jake were already at the top, Dave and Jon were just opening the locked gate at the bottom, and Tim and others were consolidating gliders on a single truck. We snuck in behind Jon and followed them to the top. The tower wires where singing when we got to the parking lot. Um, sounds breezy; at least it was crossing from the west. Everyone was groaning as we started the “Ascutney death march”; at least we had the biting black flies to keep our minds off the long slippery hike.

There was a good turnout for an early season weekday. (I want to thank the State of Vermont and the club members that worked to allow us to launch before the park opens to the general public.) Although cirrus was filling the sky and the wind was crossing at times up to 90 from the left, everyone was happy to be outside in the warm weather, setting up their flying toys, and chatting with fellow pilots for the first time since last fall.

The first pilot to launch gave everyone a scare when his glider made a 90-degree turn to the left while launching. I thought we had a tree landing in progress, but he just managed to clear the trees and fly away. Whew, too close. Jake and Jeff launched next and then it was my turn. With John and Judy’s help as wire-crew, I got off in a light cycle and began to climb above launch. (I heard that John and Judy helped most of the pilots. Thanks much!) I had a mellow climb above the top the mountain as I quickly drifted back. I pushed upwind to snag a climb out front so I could have some altitude before drifting downwind of the mountain. I was rudely trashed around as I “found” a climb. Yuck, I hoped that wasn’t going to be typical for the day. Unfortunately, it was. We had the prototypical “tossed salad” going on. There were about 15 gliders flying between 500 below to 1000 feet above launch in trashy blowing air. I saw several gliders flung around in very unusual and sometimes comical ways as the air had its way with them. It was tough to figure out what was going on. The top of climb wasn’t far above the mountain. Although there were strong chunks of lift and sink there was also lots of wide spread areas of lift. I thought maybe a secondary front was pushing through, but I never did really grasp what was going on.

After two hours of this “fun” I thought about landing out front just to be done with the day. Finally Greg mentioned that Mark just left at 4500 feet. I thought that was too low for the wind, but it didn’t really matter anyway since I was at launch level when he left. I joined Dan and Peter in a climb over the southwest bowl and decided to head to Morningside when I broke through 4500 feet. I felt like a person that discovers the bank made a mistake in their favor when I looked over and saw I was at 5200 feet. Dan took a line to the east and I stayed over the higher ground to the west. Dan made the better decision; he soon had 900 feet over Peter and me. Dan went on a straight glide for Morningside, but we needed another climb. I bumped into some broken lift near the river that Peter couldn’t find. It gave me enough altitude to move on while Peter backtracked to the “red barn field”. (Peter had to land zipped up in his harness. He managed a good landing and, for a second, was standing upright with the glider and then fell forward since he couldn’t take another step. Bummer.) Meanwhile I floated low over the factories with their metal roofs but didn’t get a bump. It now looked like I would be landing short of Morningside with a long walk to the road. I stumbled into a weak broken climb down low and slowly drifted towards the ridge behind Morningside. The climb got better and better and I was soon climbing with style.

I spent the next hour or so flying around Morningside in what seemed like endless lift. If the windsocks were pointing west, the climb was in the notch behind launch. If the windsocks were pointing north, the climb was southeast of the ponds. The climbs also became more and more civilized. The day was changing. I took pictures and enjoyed the view as I watched Mark, Dan, Rodger, Greg, David, and Jon come in to land. I finally found some sinking air across the valley and came in to land so the rest of the crew wouldn’t get tired of waiting on me. I later found out pilots got to 7500 feet at the mountain! Jeff landed near Lake Sunapee, Tim near Mount Kearsarge, and John 69 miles away in Strafford NH. (My pathic little flight is available online).

While I was breaking down at Morningside, Dennis had his first couple of flights since his heart transplant surgery (6 months to the day). It was good seeing him back in the air. Afterwards a large group of us stopped in at the local pizza shop for a drink and bite to eat.