Wednesday I was out again at Chris Zimmerman's, as I had been before the WRE got
going in Zapata, attempting to break my world record distance of 330 kilometers
in a single surface glider. The winds were from the right direction (straight
south), although at about half the strength of the previous attempt. There was the forecast for over development, but not up
along the course line into Oklahoma, if I flew fast enough. Cloud base would be
low at first, at least, but there were supposed to be plenty of cu's, maybe even
streeted up.
Mike Degtoff had driven to Alabama so I was going to have to rely on Chris
Zimmerman, who hadn't towed in a year to get me off the ground. The early
morning conditions looked great for Georgetown and to the north, and absolutely
lousy in Zapata. The reverse of the day before, so I was excited about my
chances.
Belinda and I made it out to Chris' at 10:40. He was packing up his T2C for the
ride to Big Spring on Saturday, as there was no one to tow him up. Awfully nice
of him to tow me up.
I was ready to go at 11:45 and Chris had taken a little flight to get ready to
tow. It was a long ride on the cart on the ground behind the low power tug, but
unlike all the flights earlier in June it was much smoother. The dry fields were
quite wet.
I popped off at the land fill as the tug dropped down big time. I was at 2,000'
and could have held on till cloud base at 2,500', but we had just gone through a
little lift and I figured I was high enough. The lift was less than 50 fpm, but
I love light lift and I just kept working bits and pieces of it as Chris flew
around and showed me better cores.
I spent the next ten minutes twirling making sure that I didn't go down. It
would have been very easy to lose the lift and land in these extremely light
conditions with the low cloud base. Sort of like flying out of Zapata, but two
hour later in the day. Nice roads every where below and huge fields.
The cu's were every where and there was a 16 mph wind out of the south. Chris
had towed me a little to the east and I was determined to stay as far east as
possible to stay away from the lakes that put the kibosh on my last record
attempt here north of Austin. A lot more open fields and a lot fewer trees up
the east side of I 35.
Forty minutes into it and I was getting to 3,500' AGL and to cloud base. The
lift at base was light enough that I didn't worry about cloud suck. The wind
blew me to the north, but I wanted to go east and fortunately there were plenty
of cu's in that direction that were not too far apart. I was doing very little
gliding and mostly thermaling, which is what you do on a Falcon in light
conditions with a low cloud base.
Little cu's were forming and there were some nice fat dark ones also. I
sometimes had to head upwind just to get under a newly forming cu. My mantra was
to thermal until cloudbase and not go on glide until I was right at base.
An hour and a half into the flight I made a hard right turn to get under a
cloud, which didn't work, then had to go even further east and a little upwind
to get under a nice dark cloud. I ran the leading (upwind) edge of it much below
it until finally near the eastern edge and down to 1000' I found the lift. This
was my first good lift at 240 fpm and I took it to cloud base with three
vultures.
I had turned right to both get under a cloud and get set myself up to go around
the eastern edge of Temple. The winds had been carrying me straight toward the
main north south highway in town and I wanted to skirt the town's eastern edge
where there were open fields.
The conditions were definitely improving. I had climbed to 4,000' AGL and for
the next half hour I went from cloud to cloud flying to the eastern edge of
Temple and then north right smack dab over the town staying high and climbing in
good thermals to cloud base. The clouds were setting up in front of me to the
north toward my next waypoint at McGregor. I was five km east of the
uncontrolled airport at Temple and I had just climbed in seven thermals not
getting below 3,300' AGL.
I headed for the next cloud and stopped for a few turns just on the upwind edge
of it. It was much weaker than what I has experienced in the last seven climbs,
and I was 3,500' AGL so I continued on to get into the meat of the cloud. Big
mistake, I didn't find any lift after that and landed 73 km out from Chris'.
Belinda was right behind me and I had landed not to far away from the main
highway going to McGregor. As we drove back to Austin it was dark and overcast
from Georgetown south. The sky was full of cu's when and where I landed.
