Many pilots wonder what it really takes to
set a world record. Some wonder what it's like to fly at a place like Zapata or
other world class sites. Cloudsuck answers these and other questions while
telling the story of how I set the current Distance World Record for Rigid
Wings. Over this winter, I am pleased to make the book available as a gift to my
readers in serialized form. Each Monday, another chapter will be available for
you to enjoy here on the Oz Report. The best read is the one in it's entirety,
and both the soft cover book and an ebook are available to purchase here:
http://ozreport.com/cloudsuck.php. You can find the Kindle version on
Amazon.

If you enjoy the serialized installments, you may wish to skip the text below
and jump directly to this week's chapter, including any graphics or pictures
here: http://ozreport.com/docs/Cloudsuck10.pdf

I hope you enjoy the book and this week's chapter as much as I enjoyed writing
it.

Zapata – the World Record Encampment

“I think
everyone is missing the boat going to Hobbs or Wyoming every year.” Gary Osoba
had leaned forward in his chair on the patio of an East Wichita restaurant. “You
can’t get started early enough, you can’t get a consistent enough tail wind, and
it’s too easy to be shut down early by overdevelopment.”

That was back in June 1999, when Belinda, Dave Glover and I
had stopped in Kansas on our way out to Hobbs. As we had pored over the map
spread out among the remains of our meal, Gary had pointed to an area southeast
of Hobbs. “I’ve been looking at the weather patterns, and I think you want to
start from further east, over in Texas — maybe as far south as Brownsville. I
think you could get some really long flights down there”

And so the seed had been planted for what Gary would later
whimsically title the World Record Encampment, an expedition to an obscure place
in southeastern Texas right on the Rio Grande — the small town of Zapata.

Gary had been studying Texas weather data for a several
years. Although he already held more sailplane world records than any other
glider pilot, he was hungry for more — and the intellectual challenge of finding
the “perfect” place continued to intrigue him. Looking for a specific pattern
that would provide the necessary conditions, he had noticed a large
meteorological feature that develops in the Gulf of Mexico during the summer —
the extension of the Bermuda high.

This high-pressure region is so big that it dominates the
summer weather from Florida to West Texas and from the Yucatan to Oklahoma City.
The center of the extension of the high pressure, when situated just right for
world records, lies south of New Orleans and east of Brownsville, Texas.

The winds associated with the Bermuda High, as with any
high pressure area in the northern hemisphere, circulate clockwise, bringing
southeast winds to South Texas. And this high pressure system isn’t a
once-every-couple-of-days kind of thing, but a consistent pattern. In the
summer, day after day the high remains out over the Gulf of Mexico with the
winds consistently rotating clockwise around it. Weather disturbances coming
from the west and north generally bounce off it and go up through Kansas or the
Dakotas. This consistency was important to Gary because it could dramatically
increase his chances of setting a world record during a one- or two-week visit.

Earlier that year he had flown south out of Uvalde, a
popular sailplane port just west of San Antonio, looking for the conditions it
would take to fly his ultralight Carbon Dragon the 450 miles to set a world
open-distance record for ultralight sailplanes (and Class 4 hang gliders). From
Uvalde he had cruised toward Crystal City, but he hadn’t made it as far south as
Laredo.

The terrain looked promising, he thought, but no one he
knew of had ever flown a hang glider or a sailplane in extreme South Texas, so
he didn’t have any local lore to provide guidance. He knew that moist winds
would be flowing out of the Gulf of Mexico, and that cumulus clouds would mark
the lift coming off the warm flat alluvial plain below. He wondered how far
south it might be possible to start a cross-country flight.

Gary had spent some of his youth in east Texas, but he
didn't have much on-the-ground familiarity with the areas on the border, around
Laredo and McAllen. He didn't know if there would be suitable landing areas for
a pilot who landed early. He didn't know if there was an airport that would let
soaring pilots set up camp there.

Gary’s usual strategy was to get going very early in the
morning — much, much earlier than most pilots thought it was possible to stay
aloft. Once in the air, he would hang out in the lightest of lift, drifting with
a favorable wind, and just hold on until the day got better. Gary had already
used this strategy to his advantage in competitions, taking advantage of the
Carbon Dragon’s low sink rate to get out on course ahead of all the others,
making up for the fact that he couldn't fly nearly as fast in the heat of the
day as they could. If he could get going early enough, he felt he stood a good
chance of setting another world record.

The historical weather records indicated to Gary that
cumulus clouds would start forming soon after dawn near Laredo to provide visual
help, showing where the lift was early, when conditions were light. The extra
help of the cumulus clouds would make it just that much more possible to stay up
in the light morning lift. He figured that by afternoon he should be able to
reach the Hill Country just to the north of Uvalde. Those hot, convoluted rocks
the size of hills should be cooking by then, providing plenty of strong lift to
get him up high and onto the Edwards Plateau in short order.

Despite the lack of previous long distance flights in
sailplanes or hang gliders from South Texas, all the weather records indicated
that this would be a very fruitful spot. Gary figured he should be able to make
it to the Texas panhandle by late in the afternoon in his Carbon Dragon, into an
area of high winds blowing north. With five hundred miles behind him, he
believed he should be able to set a new ultralight sailplane record of over six
hundred miles.

Ever since that evening in the Wichita restaurant, Gary and
I had been e-mailing each other, mulling over the idea of a flying safari to
South Texas, hashing over possible locations. Gary had intensified his review of
twenty years worth of weather data, which was available thanks to the World Wide
Web and the industrious National Weather Service. His analysis told him that
south toward Brownsville he should indeed be able to find the world record place
that he — and by now we — were looking for.

In spite of Michael's death in Hobbs, I felt that it would
be worthwhile going to South Texas. I had really enjoyed my big flights in
Australia, where I still thought it was possible to set a world record. Now,
with Gary's enthusiasm and my trust in his ability to correctly read the weather
data, I felt that South Texas was just a lot better than anywhere else in the
world.

If breaking Larry's record really was possible — and I sure
hadn’t believed that a year earlier — then trying for world records might not be
such a futile exercise after all. I now had experience with a couple of two
hundred-mile flights (well, one was 199.5 miles), so the impossible was now
perhaps possible for me. If Texas was that much better than all the other sites
people had tried, well then maybe it was a goer.

I'd been in contact with pilots around the world through
the Oz Report who had a lot to say about their local versions of the world's
best site to go long distances. The Brazilian pilots were especially
enthusiastic about Andradas, a site in northeastern Brazil. As in South Texas,
you could get an early start there because of the sea breezes, and there was
always a steady tailwind. The problem was that this Brazilian site was too close
to the equator, so the day length was too short. The thermals stopped at 5:30 in
the afternoon, and it was dark by six. In Texas you could fly until 9:45 if you
flew within a few weeks of the solstice.

South African pilots were convinced that Namibia was the
hot spot. Of course, they didn't mention the difficulty of following and finding
pilots flying across the desert. Maybe South Texas wasn't the most scenic spot
in the world to set the distance world record, but just because it was
conveniently located didn’t mean it wasn't exotic enough to be just that.

Now as the summer of 2000 approached, Gary had to nail down
the actual launch site, with a place to tow, high early cloud bases, strong
enough south to southeast winds, and at least basic amenities nearby. In June,
as the high pressure in the Gulf of Mexico set up, he analyzed the hourly values
for cloudbase, as well as wind speed on the ground and aloft. Picking two sites,
one near McAllen and one further north on the highway to Laredo, he sent out the
daily data to Dave Sharp, Kari Castle, Tiki Mashy, and me.

It soon became clear that Zapata, forty miles south of
Laredo, had the best mix of higher early morning clouds and light winds on the
ground with stronger winds aloft. Gary phoned the Zapata Chamber of Commerce as
he tried to determine whether this was the spot. He reported to us on his
conversation by e-mail:

I might be blowing it here. From my cyber-perspective,
today looks about the worst weather-wise for quite a while with oppressive high
pressure down there.

Even so, I just got off the phone with the Chamber of
Commerce staff, and off-hand remarked that there's probably not a cloud in the
sky. They looked outside, and said:

Zapata: "No, there are puffy clouds but they're just
scattered around. They're not very much bunched up together, which is what I
hear you want."

Gary: "Really...I'm surprised. But we do want them to
line up together."

Zapata: "Yeah, they're kind of spread apart like a bunch
of different lines across the sky. They just look like several lanes in straight
lines. Maybe it will get better before you get here".

Gary: (To himself) "Fish in a barrel". (To Zapata) "I'll
bet the wind's not blowing very strong today, is it?"

Zapata: "Yeah, that's the good thing because usually when
the cloud lanes are everywhere it's just so windy. It's only blowing about 15
mph today. Maybe when you get here, there will be lots of clouds and the wind
won't blow so hard."

Gary: "Righto".

Ooh, it looks like a perfect day. Too bad we aren't there
yet, and won't be there for a while.

In addition to the consistency of the high that centered
itself in the Gulf of Mexico, what made it unique was how big it was. Stability
would give us the same good conditions day after day. But the size of this
weather feature was what would make straight-line flight downwind possible.

Continue reading here:
http://ozreport.com/docs/Cloudsuck10.pdf