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/Cloudsuck11.pdf

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

Flying Far

On
Monday the 17^th we got our first taste of the conditions Gary had
promised. Gary was out at Zapata County Airport at six AM to see the first
cumulus clouds forming. By the time I woke up at 7:30, there were cu’s
everywhere. The condition that the locals call the “overrun” had begun: cool air
from the Gulf was running over the hot mesquite-covered flatlands of south
Texas, where the air was in the nineties at night.

Driving out of town you couldn’t help but notice that mesquite and
five foot high prickly pear surrounded the road. Well, you couldn’t help
noticing this if you were a hang glider pilot and you were always evaluating
possible landing areas. Every plant I had seen here in south Texas seemed to
have thorns. There didn’t seem to be any open areas. The runway had just been
cut out from the surrounding Mesquite; it was the only friendly place that I
could see anywhere.

We still had our gliders set up in the hangar from the previous
day, making it easier to get going in the morning. This particular morning I was
the first pilot to launch, just after ten o’clock, but I couldn’t get up in the
light lift. It seemed I was just  too anxious to get going — and Dave and Dustin
were more than willing to let me be the guinea pig.

Just before eleven I tried again. I wasn’t able to climb very high
on tow, and I released quite low at about seven hundred feet above the ground. I
flew over to a spot under a small cumulus cloud just to the east of the runway,
found some light lift, and started circling under the cloud as it drifted.
Slowly I climbed out to three thousand feet, working the lift under this small
cloud that was moving quickly to the north.

Wow, this felt great! I love light lift, when I'm not getting
tossed about by an overpowering parcel of air. I was out of the heat now and in
the cooler air. I was high enough just north of the airport to get a good look
at the countryside. Ooh, there was indeed a lot of mesquite and most likely
prickly pear; although from this altitude I couldn’t quite make out the
individual prickly pear plants.

I could see a few small cleared pasture areas here and there, but
they were scattered infrequently about below me. I'd flown in many different
places, but I was used to having plenty of potential landing areas. Not here.

There were, however, a large number of small clear areas around
natural gas wells. Zapata County produces more natural gas than any other county
in the United States. The tax base that this supports was reflected in the huge
new high school under construction on the highway out toward the airport.

I was thinking that the cleared areas around gas wells, while
small, might be possible emergency landing areas. I would just have to watch out
for the fences, equipment, trucks, etc. Jeez, I hoped I was right about these
clearings. Still, I was now high enough to not have to worry quite so much about
possible landing areas — though when you don't have a motor, landing is
something you always have to consider. Some times more than others.

Well, here I was. It was our first day of trying to set the new
world record. I was up in the air and drifting downwind over a totally unknown
area. This was what we had come for. I had told myself I was ready to do it, and
I was pretty keyed up.

I was out of Zapata first, on my own while Dustin and Dave were
stuck at the airstrip not getting up. The wind was blowing strongly enough that
I was more than fifteen miles north of the airport before I heard Dave on the
radio starting to climb out.

Only a few minutes later, at nineteen miles north of the airport,
I was only five hundred feet over the ground. I had been in desperate search
mode for the last few minutes, unable to find any lift. Now I was so low that I
was basically on final approach to a landing in a small clearing near a gas
well. Was this going to end so soon?

Right out in front of me as I approached the ground I spotted a
turkey vulture flying straight and then miraculously starting to turn in lift.
Oh man, was I happy to see this. I continued to head right for him and when I
got there I started climbing up with him. We climbed out together. Real birds of
a feather.

When I'm hang gliding I often see birds and watch their behavior.
Many times birds have led me to lift, and plenty of times they've just strung me
along going their own way for their own purposes. Usually, unless I see a bird
circling and going up, I don't take it as any kind of sign that the bird will
take me to rising air. Now I had just been saved by one of my favorite soaring
birds, at an elevation lower than I’d ever been saved by a bird. I was full of
gratitude and amazement that the vulture had been right there at exactly the
right time to get me out of a big jam. I was hoping that there would be plenty
of birds here in south Texas that would likewise help me out when I got into a
jam.

Turkey vultures are superior soaring birds with much better sink
rates than human beings on hang gliders. They are the first birds you’ll see
soaring early in the day. Black vultures, which have similar flight
characteristics to high performance hang gliders, won’t be flying for another
hour and a half after the turkey vultures.

Turkey vultures weigh about four pounds and have a wing span of 67
inches. My hang glider and I together weigh three hundred pounds, and I have a
wing span of forty feet. The turkey vulture has to carry about one third the
weight per square inch of wing area that my wings have to carry.

As I circled up with the turkey vulture I managed to climb only to
about three thousand feet. Finally I had to turn and glide north to the next
possible source of lift. As it turned out I would be groveling along at these
low elevations for a while, so it was nice to see that after my low save I could
continue to find lift often enough to keep in the air. Early in the day, areas
of lift are usually closely spaced together, while there is not much height to
the lift. As the height of the lift rises later in the day, the areas of lift
get smaller and further apart.

I heard on the radio that Dustin and Dave were up and flying
twenty miles behind me. It looked as though I would be on my own, unless I flew
really slowly. We were all feeling pretty good to finally be in the air and
making a valid attempt at the world record.

I flew north toward the east side of Laredo, still not getting
over three thousand feet, but enjoying myself and getting used to the new
countryside. The land below was unusual because there didn’t seem to be any
public roads. There were private dirt roads coming east from Highway 83, three
or four miles to my west, but very few north/south roads — and none that went
for more than a mile or so.

Because Texas, unlike Arizona, New Mexico, and California, honored
the Spanish land grants, the original shape of the holdings has been preserved.
They are long skinny parcels perpendicular to the Rio Grande. Everyone enters
their property from Highway 83, and the land isn't divided up into squares by
farm roads as it might be elsewhere.

In fact, the first public road is nine miles north of the airport.
If you go down early you are going to be hurting. It is a long walk out from
behind a locked gate. You've got an eighty-pound glider and a lot of gear. Your
retrieval vehicle may not be able to get close to you. Heat stroke is a real
possibility. We were still puzzling how to handle going down in the first thirty
miles, since there was only that one public road in the whole area. I intended
to stay up and avoid the problem.

As I approached Laredo from the southeast I could make out the
airport that I wanted to stay far away from. Highway 359 was nearby, so my
concerns about possibly landing had decreased. Soon I could pick out Highway 83
coming off Interstate 35 ten miles north of Laredo, and follow it to the
northwest. Belinda and I had driven down this highway coming into Laredo, so it
was easy to recognize.

When Dustin came this way later in the day, he found Interstate 35
going north out of Laredo to be irresistible. He followed it to the
north-northeast, thinking it was Highway 83, and completely confused his chase
crew. Finally, a few hours after he had landed, Dustin figured out where he was
and guided his crew to retrieve him.

Meanwhile Dave was following me up 83, but he was low and airsick.
Maybe it was the heat at the airstrip, but he was not doing well at all.

Not until I was ninety miles north-northwest of Zapata did I
finally leave the mesquite covered country behind for cultivated lands with some
dry pastures. Every now and then I would see an actual crop growing in a field
below me.

At 120 miles north of Zapata and just south of Crystal City, I
again found myself quite low. I had been jumping between cloud streets, pushing
against a slight crosswind in order to stay with the road. While there was lift
under the cloud streets, there was plenty of sink in between them. So now I
found myself low over a cornfield next to a small creek just east of Highway 83.

Once again the birds were with me. I found a couple of vultures
turning just north of the cornfield, and joined them at five hundred feet over
the ground. The birds I had come across in this flight were the best I had ever
seen at sensing when I needed help.

I entered that thermal to find air rising at over fifteen hundred
feet per minute. This was big air; I was just holding on to the control bar and
praying that I didn’t find the ragged edge of this baby. After riding that snake
for a couple of thousand feet I just had to leave at 4,500 feet. It was way too
scary. I was such a wuss.

Dave notified us on the radio that he had landed twenty miles to
my south, too airsick to continue, on a private airstrip at a large ranch. The
hired help found him, but were nervous that he might be doing something illegal,
perhaps smuggling drugs by hang glider from Mexico. He was detained for an hour
while they got the landowner over to check him out, and was released about the
time Dustin’s drivers arrived with the retrieval truck.

Meanwhile, as I could tell from that last scary ride, I had left
the nice smooth moist thermals influenced by the Gulf of Mexico and was flying
in the rock-and-roll air that you find in the middle of the day over a desert. I
was climbing to over five thousand feet in each thermal, but I had to hold on
real tight.

Continue reading here:
http://ozreport.com/docs/Cloudsuck11.pdf