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/Epilogue.pdf

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

Success breeds more Success

The news of the new world records set in Zapata quickly spread throughout the
worldwide hang gliding community. Of course I wrote about it in my online e-zine,
the Oz Report (http://ozreport.com),
but there were plenty of others who picked up the story. I wrote an article for
Hang Gliding magazine, and the European hang and paragliding magazines
published notices about the new records.

Betinho Schmitz, a top Brazilian hang glider pilot,
resolved right away to come the following year to Zapata and set the flex wing
world record. Red Bull energy drink was sponsoring him, so he started talking
with them about a proposal to do a video of his record attempt.

Many U.S. pilots contacted me about coming in 2001, and I
made up a list of potential invitees. I wanted to be sure that the top
competition pilots were encouraged to attend our second World Record Encampment,
especially some top European pilots.

We decided that with so many pilots coming to Zapata we'd
have to get a Dragonfly to aerotow everyone up early in the morning. At the
Florida meets the following April, I spoke with Manfred Ruhmer, the flex wing
world champion. He hadn't seriously considered it before since he had never done
any cross-country flying outside of competitions, but he quickly decided to
come. We scheduled two two-week sessions, so that pilots attending the World
Championships in Spain could fly to the U.S. in time for the second session.

The first session started off on June 23^rd with
weather that was conducive to long distance flying, and many of the participants
exceeded their personal bests. On June 28^th, Mark Poustinchian flew
369 miles to break my world record. He launched a little after 11 AM on a day
that didn’t look that good — just a few cu's starting at 10:25, and strong winds
out of the south — and ended up near Abilene.

On June 30^th, things looked particularly
interesting. We had gotten really excited looking at the forecast the night
before, since the winds looked right. But there was one problem: high vertical
air movements were predicted to occur in the afternoon northeast of Sonora, the
signs of a cumulo-nimbus cloud.

I got off to a nice early start, and the conditions were
the best I had ever experienced. I’d flown a hundred miles by noon and two
hundred miles by 2:45 PM. I was hours ahead of my previous best flight. But as I
approached Rock Springs up on the Edwards Plateau I could see clouds piling up
on top of other clouds fifty miles to my north. This looked bad. A thunderhead
could suck all the lift out of the sky for hundreds of square miles.

Hoping that the clouds would not continue to climb, I
headed northwest toward Sonora. The clouds continued to climb high and I knew
that I was going to lose my best day. My only hope was to go west and try to get
around the storm. I took a sharp left turn to the west and flew forty miles
along Interstate 10, hoping to outrun the clouds. Another cumulo-nimbus cloud
formed to the west of the original cloud and there was just no way to get around
both storms. All the other cu’s were wiped up and the lift disappeared. I landed
in disappointment near the freeway.

The weather conditions deteriorated for the next couple of
weeks as the first crew headed home and the pilots coming from the Worlds showed
up. Every day the skies were blue with very few cumulus clouds. The winds were
light.

These relatively poor conditions didn't stop Manfred Ruhmer,
whose longest flight before he came to the World Record Encampment had been 130
miles — as a task in a competition. Manfred flew at every opportunity despite
the poor prospects for a new world record, improving his personal best. He was
able to build up to 224 miles in less than perfect conditions.

Manfred had just won his second world championship in a
row, in Spain. Kathleen Rigg, the highest scoring female pilot in the Worlds,
teamed up with Manfred and was getting long flights also, although not as long
as Manfred's.

Paris Williams, the number one ranked pilot in the U.S., Bo
Hagewood, the U.S. National Champion, and Kari Castle, the Women's World
Champion, all arrived from the Worlds along with Andre Wolf and Betinho Schmitz,
the top pilots from Brazil.

Of course we were all hoping that conditions would improve.
And on the evening of July 16^th, after two weeks of nice — but not
very long — flights, it became clear that the next day would be the day.

On that night the predicted temperature soundings for
Zapata, Del Rio, San Angelo, and Midland showed a strong push of moist air up
from the Gulf of Mexico, spreading over Texas during the night. At dawn cumulus
clouds were expected to start forming at Zapata and throughout the state. It
looked as though the clouds would stay with us for the whole day.

The winds were predicted to continue blowing out of the
southeast, as they had every day of our encampment. They wouldn't be wrapping
around and coming from the south later in the day up near Uvalde, but rather
stay straight south-southeast all day long.

When we got up before sunrise the cumulus clouds were
forming right over the airport, just as predicted the night before. They
continued to form in the early morning and this encouraged everyone to get to
the airport early. We phoned Dustin Martin, who had flown 214 miles on the 16^th
and was still in Rocksprings. After his driver had turned around and left him he
had been forced to spend the night sleeping in an abandoned storefront in his
harness. He told us ruefully that the cu's were there and flying by over his
head.

Although we pulled into the airport before eight that
morning, we weren't sure when we should launch. One would hate to launch a
little too early and miss the best day of the encampment by landing early in
lift that was still too light. The weather conditions so far this year had not
lived up to our high expectations, and we were really nervous about wasting a
good day by making a bad decision.

Gary Osoba, my fellow WRE organizer, was bent on holding us
back. Last year he had worked to get us going earlier each morning, but now he
was worried that we were leaving too early in conditions that wouldn't keep us
up.

We had been experimenting with our special Dragonfly,
custom-built with an especially powerful engine. We were able to launch two hang
gliders behind it, one of the pilots using a shorter rope to maintain
separation.

Mark Poustinchian and I got into the air at 9:30 on a
double tow to 6,500 feet. I foot launched, hooked to the short rope on the right
side of the airstrip, instead of taking off from the cart. There was a lot of
tension about this early launch, and in the hurry and confusion I kicked my
harness’ zipper, jamming it. After towing all the way up I had to dive back to
the airport, land and fix the zipper.

Mark would land out near Laredo, so maybe that was a stroke
of good luck for me. I didn't and still don't think of it that way.

Next up, Manfred and Paris Williams took a tow to cloudbase
at 3,300 feet and released at ten AM. The cloud base was the highest we'd had
that year for so early in the morning — normally we would expect the clouds at
that time to begin at two thousand feet or so. I waited on the ground for Bo
Hagewood and Curt Warren and then Andre Wolf to tow. It was agony. I had wanted
to be on course an hour earlier. I knew Manfred was ahead of me and that it
would be hard to catch him.

My turn finally came at 10:30. But as I was pulled up I
broke a weaklink at only 590 feet over the airport. No way did I want to land
again, only to wait again for other pilots to launch in front of me. Kari Castle
was all ready and waiting to launch next. I willed myself to stay up in the
little dribbling thermal that was drifting quickly to the north away from the
runway.

The clouds were streeted up — I could see six streets to my
left in addition to the one over my head. All the streets were headed from
Zapata right toward the Laredo airport and its controlled airspace. I knew I
would have to circle up to near cloudbase, then immediately begin jumping
streets to get to the east and around the airspace.

This was the first time during the 2001 WRE that we'd seen
the kind of streeting that we had anticipated. As one of the WRE organizers I
had been feeling very responsible for the unresponsive weather, and it was a
great relief to finally see morning cloud streets.

Meanwhile Manfred and Paris were racing under and across
the cloud streets as happy as pigs in mud, thinking that they had better get out
there way in front. As they approached Laredo the streets and the clouds
suddenly stopped and they had to put on the brakes. Quickly the race was not to
the swift, but to the patient.

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