Pre-Worlds (Day 7)

Whew! I don’t think I could have packed anything else into the last day at the pre-worlds. The day started with a spot landing contest. I snapped a quick picture of the rain falling on the contestants lined up for take-off when Mark Dowsett and I drove onto the airfield. The showers were light and after drying the leading edges the tugs started dragging contestants into the air. There was a category for each class; single surface, sport, flex, and rigid. Oh, yeah, a bonus competition between the meet-heads David and Davis. I have a lot of low-res clips of the spot landings that I’ll try to patch together into a short video later.

Since Bubba, Davis, and I were at the spot landing contest, we started the task committee meeting about the same time the full pilots meeting started. We wanted a task that would bring the pilots back for the awards ceremony in the evening, but the wind and continuing overcast made a short run to the northeast the best bet. Unlike the previous day, the clouds retreated and the ground started heating shortly after we began staging.

Bo and I were worried the day would explode once the trigger temperature was reached. Bo, Pete, Bubba, Carl, and I quickly jumped into the line and beat most of the priority queue to launch. Armand towed me up to the west, which turned out to be the best place to be. While others struggled with weak lift, I steadily climbed to cloud base and remained there flying upwind from cloud to cloud with Gerolf until the first start gate. I warned the others on my frequency about the developing cloud suck and the towers shooting up from the clouds to the south. There wasn’t anything threatening at that point, but it was a sure sign to run the course as soon and as fast as possible.

A line of clouds formed to the left (northwest) of the course line that started dumping rain about the time the first start gate opened. It was totally blue to the left of the clouds and mostly blue to the right (which was our course line). A climb or two later many of the clouds in that line were dumping rain and one or two were tossing out an occasional bolt of lightning. The pilots I was with ran along the edge of those clouds being careful to maintain plenty of maneuvering altitude above the ground and below the clouds. I was rounding the largest cell when I saw a glider loop and head back. A couple other gliders soon turned and followed. That is usually a sign the day as been cancelled so I got on the radio and asked if anyone had seen the “riding bicycle” sign. Mike asked our driver Beth to call David to see if the task was cancelled. A few minutes later Beth came back and relayed a message from David that the task was “still on”.

The course line in front of me had gaps between the rain but I was not comfortable diving through a hole that might close up before I got through it. I decided to head west to the totally blue sky. Unfortunately that meant flying over a particularly nasty gust front below. I wanted enough altitude to either outrun the front or land away from it in the sunshine to the west. 5 or 6 of us flew perpendicular to and over the gust front climbing in the rowdy air. I saw Glen Volk run towards goal through a gap and was considering the same path until the gap closed from the top to the bottom with a curtain of rain. I continued to circle around the rain basically under a blue sky until I was almost due west of the goal. I raced back east in front of a line of broken showers in smooth air towards the airport. I was not only racing other pilots that were diving through the gaps, but also the slowly approaching rain. Mike Barber, who dove through earlier, reported the airfield was still dry and that six gliders had already arrived. Five more gliders dove in below me as I bled off the excess altitude.

Once on the ground we quickly broke down before the rain arrived. We could hear the thunder in the distance and see the rain to the south, but other than a few brief periods of “heavy sprinkles”, we stayed mostly dry. I was surprised to see Jorg landing as were we getting ready to leave about 45 minutes later. (He said later he was “hanging around” the area waiting for a good opportunity to come into goal.)

Meanwhile Bubba, Carl Burick, and Pete Lehmann landed somewhere back on course. Bubba landed near a road and was quickly picked up by Beth. The two of them stopped to help a Brazilian pilot who was rushing to break down before a gust front arrived. Glen got a ride back with someone else which left Mike and I at goal. Luckily Beth and Bubba were close enough that it made sense to get us and before picking up Carl and Pete.

Many XC pilots will tell you the adventure starts AFTER you land. Well, that was true today. A rancher stopped and gave Pete directions to his location which Pete forwarded to Beth. Lucky for everyone involved we were riding in Bubba’s large 4x4. We drove a long way on slippery dirt tracks through very scenic canyons, washes, mesas. We could have spent all day looking at the scenery, but we had pilots to retrieve. We eventually found Pete standing at the side of a dirt road and started working on our plan to find Carl. After getting Pete onboard we headed out along some barely visible tracks through a ranch. We came to a dead-end when we noticed the rancher that previously talked with Pete was following us. He suggested another route further back so we turned around and followed him back to a makeshift gate that he graciously opened for us after giving us some directions. (The directions were something like “follow the fence line awhile until you see a track to the right, take it for awhile and you should find your guy".) The rancher could not have been more friendly or helpful.

We drove across the range hoping that we didn’t puncture a tire on a mesquite thorn since the spare was not in good shape. It felt like we were on some kind of safari! (I’ll bet people pay good money for this kind of outing.) We finally found Carl standing near a corner where two fence lines met. He found a nice place to land, but if we were driving anything else he would have had a very LONG walk out. Once Carl was onboard we continued our backcountry tour of Texas until the dirt tracks turned to dirt roads and then finally to pavement.

On the way back we heard from Glen that the day had been cancelled. Uh? Cancelled after the day was finished? That didn’t make sense so I called and talked with David. He said Attila had filed a protest and the protest committee declared the day invalid. I have a lot more to say about what apparently went on but I am saving that for the Oz Report.

Once back to the airfield, I tossed the glider on the truck, grabbed a quick shower at the motel, and then headed to the awards party. A local businessman offered his home to us for the evening as he did last year. (Another sign of the great hospitality I continue to see at Big Spring). We ate, drank, and compared notes on the day’s flying. Pilots landing near the gust front from the big cell had exciting stories to tell. Some pilots were upset the day was declared invalid while others where happy it was called; most wondered why it wasn’t cancelled in flight. I talked to Jeff O'Brian who was on the protest committee and got a short description of what took place while I was on safari. David later presented the spot landing awards and the awards for each class in the main event. After the awards we said goodbye to our “competition friends” and promised to meet up “somewhere down the line”.