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/Cloudsuck12.pdf

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

Wandering in the Desert

After Dave set his two new records,
our World Record Encampment broke up. Dave had to go back to work in New Mexico,
and Gary had obligations back in Kansas. Dustin and the boys went back to
Phoenix. Belinda and I were left behind to suffer in the heat, waiting for a day
with sufficiently strong winds and early morning thermals. With our friends gone
and Larry’s record broken, the excitement was over.

We felt cast adrift, sitting in our trailer in this
almost-ghost-town empty of its winter Texans. With no other pilots to encourage
me, I felt desperate. Would the conditions improve so that I could get my chance
to break Dave's new record?

Before we had come to Zapata, Gary had forecast such
consistent weather conditions that it had seemed every day would be a day to
break the record. We were looking for that huge high pressure system to set up
in the center of the Gulf of Mexico, bringing on-shore flow to the Texas east
coast and warm, moist, predominantly southern winds throughout the state. But as
that last week of July dragged on, the promised weather failed to show up.

I wanted to ride the southern winds far up into the Texas
panhandle, but the high pressure was not centered in the Gulf where it was
supposed to be — instead it was up near New Orleans. With the center of high
pressure so far north, the winds spinning clockwise around the center were
coming from the east here in Zapata, toward Mexico. We had only light winds, and
the morning thermals were too weak to keep me aloft in my hang glider before
noon.

July 26th, a week after Dave had gone so far, Belinda towed
me up at the airstrip at 11:30. I knew it was late, but the conditions hadn’t
been good enough for an attempt all week, and I was anxious make any effort no
matter how futile.

We'd come to Zapata expecting winds out of the
south-southeast, but today they were instead out of the southeast. If I were to
fly straight downwind I would soon have been crossing the Rio Grande. Every time
I stopped and circled in a thermal I would drift downwind toward Mexico. I knew
I would have to drive continually upwind to the east on each of my glides, as
Dave and I had done on his record day.

With my late start I should have been finding some
reasonably strong thermals, but all I was getting was weak lift. I had to
concentrate more on staying up than on racing north, constantly searching to the
east and west of my fastest course line for any lift that I could find, just
creeping along. At one point I was down to less than 450 feet over a natural gas
well, sure that I was about to land.

While it is a definite struggle to stay up when you're so
low, it is also a great adventure. First of all, you are right next to the
ground, so everything is going past you really quickly. The lift is usually
quite light (the reason you are low to begin with), so you're not getting tossed
around — although this is not always the case, as I had found out the week
before.

Hanging low in light lift calls upon all your senses. You
feel every bit of lift on your wings and do everything you can to get in just a
little bit better lift. At the same time you just can't strike out in some
direction hoping to find better lift, because you'll be on the ground long
before you find it. You have to work whatever it is that you are in.

Your attention keeps shifting between the ground, with its
potential landing areas and potential lifting areas, and the texture of the air
around you. You can't pay much attention to the sky since any clouds are usually
too far away to be of much help in spotting lift. You are right in the thick of
things, with the earth twirling around below you. It is a lot like those flying
dreams.

I struggled low for a good long time, maybe fifteen minutes
of just hanging onto the barest indication of lift, before I slowly climbed out
high enough to get into a reasonably coherent thermal. And this took time and
detracted from the bigger goal. It took me an hour and a half just to fly the
forty miles to the southeast side of Laredo.

Small cumulus clouds were forming near Laredo, and I could
now find the lift more quickly with the help of these visual lift indicators.
The lift was also improving as the day got later; I was now able to climb up
high, to five thousand feet.

With the strong easterly wind component I’d been pushed
right toward Laredo and the airport on its eastern flank. Normally I was
required by law to stay six nautical miles to the east of the airport, to avoid
controlled airspace. Frankly, given the steady stream of traffic at this
airport, I wanted to stay as far away as possible from the north and south ends
of the runways. But today, given the strong drift from the southeast, I had
little choice but to head toward the center of the airport.

I was fifteen hundred feet above the top of the controlled
airspace; at this elevation it was perfectly legal for me to fly right over the
airport. While I was not that happy about being pushed so far the west of my
planned course, it was pretty cool flying right over the top of the airport and
checking out the whole busy scene below me.

Laredo is the biggest inland NAFTA port, and all aircraft
bringing goods into the U.S. from Mexico must stop there. I could see plenty of
general aviation traffic on the runway and taxiways. I was in little danger of
interfering with airport air traffic, high as I was above the center of the
airfield, since the air traffic would be low coming in from the north or south.
I got to see quite a few of the big cargo jets.

Most of the time when I'm flying, I'm out over open ranch
and farmlands. I rarely fly anywhere near urban areas because of the lack of
landing areas near them. So it was quite a rare sight to be able to fly over
such a busy airport, perfectly legally and safely, and be able to take it all
in. I knew that down below were all those pilots who were taxiing airplanes.
Here I was way high over them, just flying. Not “piloting” a hang glider, just
flying.

The southeast winds pushed me northwest from Laredo up the
Mines Road, which follows the U.S.-Mexico border along the Rio Grande for a
hundred miles to Eagle Pass. Most of that distance was rough gravel road, which
would make things a bit slower for Belinda in the truck down below. From Eagle
Pass it would be another fifty miles on Highway 277, still hugging the border,
to Del Rio. I figured I could follow this route all the way to Del Rio and then
head toward Fort Stockton in west Texas — that was unless the winds shifted
direction as I move northwest.

I was high over open and empty desert with just the dirt
road way below me. On my left was Mexico; the road on the Mexican side of the
border was a major highway. I found this totally strange, flying high out in
that empty desert, which I knew was a highly charged military area — the border,
and there was not enough traffic to justify a paved road.

While there was a staggering level of truck traffic in
Laredo heading up toward San Antonio, apparently no one wanted to go to Eagle
Pass or Del Rio. I later learned the reason: the road was gated further to the
north to cut off all traffic going to Eagle Pass. In fact, this was considered
to be a very dangerous area for travel, the province of drug runners and
bandits.

The moist air from the Gulf was encouraging the development
of cumulus clouds, which now appeared everywhere over my head and out ahead of
me. But I was concerned that I was moving west, away from the Gulf air mass. I
would have to fly quite a long distance west to get away from its influence, but
there would be less and less moist air as I progressed further away from the
Gulf. I wondered what air mass I would find myself in many hours from now. It
seemed likely that the cumulus clouds would disappear and I would be left to
hunt for lift out in the blue.

The sight of the beautiful cumulus clouds was alluring. It
was a perfect day for flying two hundred miles — but I believed it was already
too late to make three hundred. Finally, after much internal argument, I made
the decision to land eighty miles out from Zapata. I just didn’t think I could
set the record on that day. I wanted to have plenty of energy to fly again on a
better day.

I landed in a little area mostly free of cactus and
Mesquite. There was no one out there, not even any evidence of the Border
Patrol. I tried not to look up at the inviting sky as I broke my glider down and
put it up on the truck.

The next day I was out at the Zapata airstrip for another
attempt. Again the thermals just weren't happening early enough for me to get
going when I needed to, and I stopped after sixty miles. The skies filled with
beckoning cumulus clouds, but I knew that I couldn't make three hundred miles
that day.

After a week of only marginal opportunities, we broke camp.
Belinda and I needed to get away from the heat and the frustration. I was unable
to think straight about how to break the record, and pretty discouraged. Belinda
flew from San Antonio to Nevada to visit her brother and I drove our truck to
Roswell, NM for repairs.

But August 5th found us back on the highway to Zapata from
San Antonio. We were both rested, and I was convinced that we hadn’t even
scratched the surface of what was possible at Zapata. When we arrived to find
that Tiki Mashy and her driver Dale had just driven in from Hobbs and were
already ensconced at Bob McVey’s house, I felt my enthusiasm returning, too.

All during the planning period for the World Record
Encampment, I had pushed hard on Tiki, a former women’s world record holder, to
come to Zapata. I had sent her all the advance weather data from Gary that
pointed to great conditions for setting a world record. I wanted Tiki to retake
her former record from the Australian/Swedish pilot Tove Heaney, but I hadn't
succeeded in convincing her to come earlier. Instead she had chosen to go back
to Hobbs, where she felt some measure of comfort, and where she and Hollywood
had spent many summers together.

Tiki had recruited Dale, a novice pilot in her late forties
who was living and working part time at Wallaby Ranch, to be her tow and
retrieval driver for the summer. Since Michael’s death Tiki had been working at
the Ranch as a Dragonfly pilot, under Malcolm’s protective eye. She and Dale had
driven west in Michael’s old truck, with the platform setup and winch they had
used at Hobbs.

“Hobbs has been terrible this year,” Tiki shook her head.
“My longest flight so far was only a hundred miles — and that took me four
hours. Jim Lee’s been there all month too, trying for a record, but he’s not
getting any long flights either.” Tall, and muscular, Tiki was a tenacious
competitor and it hurt her to be missing out on the good flying.

I had thought Tiki a fool to go to Hobbs when we offered
her the chance to come with us to Zapata. It was clear — to me, anyway — that
she wouldn't get what she was aiming for in Hobbs. I started to fill her in on
the Zapata area and what we’d learned so far about flying there.

“There are a few dirt roads north of the airstrip, but for
the most part they’re behind locked gates,” I warned. “So you need to be at
least two thousand feet over the airstrip before you start to head north. Don’t
let yourself get so far downwind that you can’t make it back, unless you’re over
two grand.

“And if you do go down near the airstrip, just have Dale
call the Sheriff to locate the keys and come open the gate. Dustin had to do
that a couple of weeks ago, when he landed four or five miles from the airport.
Bob McVey contacted the Sheriff for us, and a deputy got us through the gates.
We had Dustin packed up and in the car within an hour. It's a three-mile walk
out to Highway 83, so good luck trying to walk out with your hang glider and the
rest of your gear, especially by yourself. The heat is a real killer.”

The mesquite-covered countryside to the north of the
airstrip had only a few areas big enough to allow for a hang glider landing.
There wasn't a paved road for nine miles. If you left too low and didn’t get up,
the chances of getting to a road where you could be retrieved easily were quite
slim. It was better to land at the airstrip and relaunch than to let yourself
drift downwind chasing a weak thermal that might leave you stranded with over a
hundred pounds of gear.

Next morning, a Sunday, Tiki and I were both out early
towing at the airstrip, but neither of us found any lift. The early low cumulus
clouds disappeared and we were left to flail about in the blue. Gary's e-mailed
morning weather forecast had been accurate about early light thermals, but it
was wishful thinking to believe that we could stay aloft in such conditions.
After numerous attempts we quit around noon and hoped the next day would be
better. Two hours later, the sky looked agonizingly beautiful as the ground
heated up and thermals began to form.

Continue reading here:
http://ozreport.com/docs/Cloudsuck12.pdf