The 2009 Hang Gliding Worlds, day eleven, task five
We go back to Aspres, with a forecast for seven knots of northwest wind and stronger winds late in the afternoon. The lift looks to be 600 to 700 fpm, much better than the day before. Cloud base at 10,000'.
It's not coming up the south face when we get there and up above it is clearly strong from the west (we can see the shadows of the cu's racings across the launch area). But the meet organizers think that it will come up the south side so we set up there. There is just lots and lots of room there and it is easy to get everyone off the hill there.
The task committee sets up a 113 km task that goes down the valley, up the valley, across the valley, back across the valley, and then across the valley again:
Jeff Shapiro and I get down to the number one launch first just before it opens and take off in good lift. Jeff immediately blows out his zipper, but zips the upper zipper down to make for a partial fix at least to his hips.
While it is no problem getting up at launch we are not getting that high. We want to cross the valley and go to another ridge to the southwest to get a better start but the strong lift and high top of the lift is to the east and Shapiro finally convinces us to join him there as we climb out to 8,900'. It is still twenty five minutes to the first start time.
At fifteen minutes to the start time I state on our radio frequency that I am heading for the ridge to the south west, our preferred start area. Jeff O'Brien and then Jeff Shapiro and Zippy join me.
We are not in that great of lift over on this ridge. We should have run to the southeast end of it and by the first start time we are only 6,400'. I head out on the course but find much better lift at the edge of the start circle at the end of the ridge and finally we decide to wait for the second clock.
The second clock would be better except for the chance of over development. It hasn't happened yet in this flight, but it could happen later, so it is tricky deciding to take the second clock.
We climb to 9,300' in the thermal just inside the start circle. This is looking good. We get the second start time and we are high and racing with about ten guys around.
We race down the west side of the valley over the mountains, and to Chabre, which is of course the point. We figured that the west side was the hot side and it was. We had an eight mph tail wind and clouds ahead as well as mountain sides. We were cruising.
Topping out in 500 fpm average at 8,800' at Chabre we head straight into the valley toward the turnpoint which turns out to be a traffic circle off the main highway north of Sisteron. We don't find any lift in the valley and glide for 20 kilometers at 12 to 1 averaging 47 mph over the ground with bits of tail wind less than five mph.
After hitting the turnpoint we glide back into the foot hills toward the northeast and the guys just front of me find the lift on the hill side of the isolated hill at Hongrie. Jeff Shapiro has been nearby the whole time but Zippy got low gliding to Chabre and had fallen behind.
Jeff gets 600 fpm over Hongrie but I'm content with 330 fpm after coming in low to the hill side and not wanting to leave the lift that I am in.
One more much better thermal to the northeast to 8,000 ' at 400 fpm and it is a quick glide into the turning gliders at Malaup, a mountain on the east side of the gap. This turnpoint apparently has a resident thermal as it is right smack dab on the turnpoint and going up at 500 fpm. We climb to 8,500' and head northeast toward the next turnpoint.
We glide across the gap and up into the cliffs. There is a bit of turbulence there that makes it difficult to find a nice core, but I join in one at 500 fpm to get high enough at 8,400' to make sure that we could get up on the next ridge and find the good stuff.
We push forward and find on a smooth sunny slope with over 1000 fpm to over 10,000'. I'm really enjoying the flying and we are moving fast.
The turnpoint is only five kilometers away and then we will turn around and go southeast. As I approach the turnpoint 2.5 km out I spot pilots coming my way. Whoa they are only five kilometers ahead and we have fifteen minutes on them. Great!
We take the turnpoint with Jeff O'Brien just ahead but lower. Shapiro and Dustin are just ahead. Nine kilometers back I join them in a nice thermal at 400 fpm with O'Brien maybe 500' below and Shapiro a few hundred over my head.
The thermal takes us to 9,300'. I look at the 6030 as I go on glide and switch it to the final glide screen. I've got two turnpoints in front of me. The 6030 says I have goal by 2,500' at optimum speed to fly speed and 4,000' at best glide speed. It's a ten km glide to the turnpoint, then a 11 km glide to the southwest to the castle at Mison, than a 2.4 km glide to goal in the valley. The required glide ratio to make goal is 6.7 to 1.
The wind is 10 mph (at least) out of the west southwest. Jeff O'Brien says that the head wind was 13 to 18 mph and horribly rotory at Mison (the castle).
As I slow down to best glide my glide ratio goes below 6 to 1. There are maybe ten pilots in front of me, all of them lower and soon they are beginning to land. The height above Mison that I started with goes from 4,000' down to a few hundred. I need to get over this ridge and get the turnpoint to be able to glide into goal.
As I get closer the height above Mison gets smaller and smaller. Finally it is down to less than 100 feet. I can see the ridge line in front of me and I'm not going to make it. I get within 140 meters of the turnpoint and just twenty feet below the ridge line.
I hear from Jeff Shapiro. He has just landed just on the other side of the castle. Jeff O'Brien is just above him and takes two turns as he watches Jeff Shapiro turn upside down then get the glider back around and have a controlled crash downwind.
I can't cross the ridge or get any lift so I turn and dive into a big wheat field. It is like going down the toilet. Thank goodness the wheat field is soft as I land downwind also, spiraling in.
It turns out that the task had been stopped two minutes (after pushing the time back fifteen minutes) before I landed. Dustin made goal. Jeff made goal after the stop time. Zippy heard about the stop time and landed at the Camping LZ.
The farmer came out into the wheat field that I landed in and was not friendly and spoke not a word of English and the weirdest French I had ever heard. He finally demanded 100 Euros. I said 10 Euros. I don't know if he understood or not.
It became quite a confrontation with him as he grabbed my glider. I hadn't seen fear in a man's eyes in a long time so it was interesting to see it in his when I told him with my body and the tone of my voice to stay away from my stuff.
He came back later with his brother, but they didn't hang around for long. I kept telling them to call the Gendarmerie. I wanted the police to get the guy under control.
Later three Gendarmes did show up but they were looking for Carl Wallbank who had crashed and suffered some injuries, not major ones. I walked my glider out to the road.
As I waited for a ride from our driver, the Japanese team showed up and it turned out they were lost, but they found me. They were going the wrong direction and got deep into the Village Mison. Since I had had dinner there the last two nights I was able to quickly show them how to get out.
Carl was in the hospital in the evening. I heard a cut leg and a broken finger. All these could have easily happened to me or Jeff Shapiro.
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