Krzysztof Grzyb <<doitkg>>
writes:

I’ve always dreamed of flying over Indiana and landing in Ohio. I
have been close to the state border a few times but I’ve never passed it. Until
yesterday I had never done so, and yesterday was the day that I reached my
longest personal flight. I have a new sail on my Litespeed RS4, and it’s flying
very well.

I woke up very early and after checking the weather I took off to the airfield.
One thing was unknown - the retrieval help. Ken Cobb and Tom Klecha offered help
the day before and they both confirmed it Sunday morning so everything looked
great because a lot of pilots were planning to go for it.

At this time of year we can fly here in the Midwest up until 8 pm. So my plan
was to fly that day as long as I could. The tricky part was the takeoff time. My
plan was to take off very early at about 11.00 AM to increase the chance for a
long flight. When my glider was almost set up a lot of pilots started arriving.
About 15 minutes until 10am we noticed a couple of early Cu’s around us.

Eric and Laura took early flights and I saw that Eric was able to stay in the
air on his Falcon. Great job Eric, and thank you for showing us what was
happening over the ground. I did not wait until 11.00 am, I took my wing and
went to line up behind Laura. Bogdan towed me straight to a 200 fpm thermal a
couple of minutes after 10.30am. It developed into 500 fpm and I went to 4K and
began my adventure, flying almost straight to the east. The next thermal over
I-57 was stronger at 700 fpm. Now I got to CB. The first 20-30 miles were very
easy and fast. Pilots reported that 15-20 minutes after my take off the sky went
blue and the lift was gone for another hour or more.

The conditions began to be weaker. I knew that flying east the wind speed will
slightly increase, BS ratio decrease and CB increase. I ignored it and I tried
to keep going fast. Mistake! I put myself 1000’ above the wind mill farm in
smooth sink with 6K cloud base over my head! This time was “Mama mia” time that
day. My gear was outside, ready for landing and I didn’t want to land there
between huge blades at 1:30! I was lucky to find some nasty turbulent broken
bubble of rising air. Finally I was back in the game after about 20 minutes.

Now I began to be more careful, to not make similar risks again. I tried to stay
high near 6-7K where the thermals were more organized than they were below 4K.
The clouds were not working as well as they normally do. A couple of great
looking clouds did not help me at all, and I lost some time and altitude while
searching for a good rising spot. It was at times frustrating. A couple times
flying from cloud to cloud I got nice strong lift with no clouds present. It was
fun.

Flying closer to CTRs I was able make a plan to avoid the closest CTR using a
feature in the Flytec 6030. All of the US CTRs are in an SD card and the Flytec
based on my position is loading from this card to RAM memory only 100 closest
CTRs. Flying deeper to East the vario is deleting CTRs far west from RAM memory
but uploading new one from East side. It helps a lot!

Before this, I was using a Garmin 76s which has a lot of limitations.

Coming closer to the IN and OH border I noticed 50-70 miles west of me the first
signs of cirrus. Not good but I forgot about it very fast because my dream came
true! I crossed the state line about 5K above ground at 4.30pm. Now I see very
well the unforgivable Dayton Airport and I see SE of me the place where I landed
a couple of years ago flying from Cloud 9. My GPS shows now 200 miles!

Now my Flytec 6030 helped me a lot. Flying between a lot of big and small
airspaces I was constantly switching between pages trying to figure out how to
avoid restricted air spaces. There are a lot of airports in this area. Some of
them are restricted and some are not restricted.

When I was working in a thermal just SW of Dayton OH I noticed that this ugly
cirrus is extremely thick and all of the ground 10 miles west of me is in dark
shade. Flying east with the wind and passing Hwy 675 this cirrus shade caught up
to me and quickly passed me to the East. Now I was sure that my flight would end
soon. It was 5pm. I understood that I could not beat Dustin’s and Jonny’s East
Coast Record in this condition.

Flying in weaker and weaker thermals I was getting closer to the ground, and I
made a quick final glide landing at 6.15pm 252 miles away from Enjoy Field, IL.
I was in front of Jamey Carey’s house in Sabina OH. Jamey and his wife Tanya are
sailboat competitors so waiting for Tom we had a lot of fun talking about flying
and boating.

The night was long driving back home from Ohio, but at 4.30 AM I was in bed.

I would like to thank Tom, Ken and Tania with Jamey for all the help I have last
Sunday.

The flight details are here:
http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/para/flightinfo.html?dsId=2459830