RANDOM THOUGHTS FROM THE BACK SEAT By Jeff Orchard
Trolling For Thermals in a Mackerel Sky *
In 1977, after one of my trips to West Texas where I got some valued instruction from World Soaring Champion and Smirnoff Race winner Wally Scott in cross country technique, I decided to attempt a flight from Salem, NH to Old Town, Maine. If I made it, it would be a Gold Badge leg, slightly more than the required 189 miles, and , as it turned out, a New Hampshire state distance record in the 15 meter class. My ship was M4, the Schweizer 1-35 owned by Ralph Markson and currently around the club on occasion.
The flying in West Texas is different than it is in New England. There are no trees to speak of; oil wells provide only limited shade, there are lots of big flat spaces to land on if you need them and the thermals are usable from 300 feet to 17,000 feet. (That's a story for another time.) The temperatures hover around 100 degrees, producing lift in the 500 to 1500 FPM range. Paradise, and you have to drink the water. Afternoon jaunts from Odessa to Albuquerque and back were normal. A sixteen year old pilot flew over 600 miles one day. The locals all said "He done purty goo-ad." I was astonished.
In my two weeks with Wally and the boys, I flew 8 one hundred mile triangles (sometimes 3 in a day), 3 three hundred mile triangles, one out and return that was over four hundred miles and the crown jewel of the trip, three turnpoints totalling 511 miles. All done and tied down before 5 PM every day, when Red Farmer would show up at the airport with a 40 gallon cooler full of Coors beer and ice.
The rules were simple:
1. Get a 2 thousand foot tow and climb to cloud base or 10,000 feet, whichever came first. Look for a cloudstreet on the way up.
2. Fly under the cloudstreet in a straight line. Negative flaps and redline between thermals, stall speed and full flaps in the lift. No turns unless you got below 8,000 feet.
3. At the end of the day, walking the wing back to the hangar through the scrub brush, watch for snakes and scorpions if you get off the paved taxiway.
4. Drink many beers and tell every flying story you know, starting with “There I was....”.
When I got back to New Hampshire, I decided that my real cross country test would be to do a long flight in this region, where there are trees, hills, rivers, rocks and lakes... with widely scattered airstrips to take the edge off. Planning continuously for a Saturday and a Sunday, I drew maps, anticipated problem areas, made and changed plans and kept tabs on the weather. It looked like Monday was going to be a good day, so I called my chase crew and put them on notice.
Sunday night I tried to sleep, but the maps and plans and anticipation kept me wide awake. I finally got up at about 4:30 AM and went to the local "Squat and Gobble" for breakfast. I was at the airport at 6:30 and got the glider untied and loaded all my stuff and sat down with the map to go over the last minute details. At around 9 AM, a high thin overcast began to creep in from the southwest and I watched for a couple of hours as it thickened to the point that it was limiting the development of thermals. Just before noon, with a moderate sense of secret relief, I bagged it and went home to bed.
The following Thursday dawned bright and clear with a 10- 15 knot northwest wind and a forecast of a partly cloudy afternoon. At 11:00 AM, I told the chase crew to wait for one hour after my take-off and then head up the Maine turnpike, stopping at each exit to call back to the airport to see if I had landed yet. I took a citizens band walkie-talkie, thinking that if I landed in a remote field, I could reach the van as they got closer and could lead them in, and handed them a roll of dimes for the pay phones.
With the barograph sealed and the paperwork signed, I towed to 2,000 feet a little after 11 AM. I dove off tow to notch the trace and headed out on course, 060 degrees. Cloud base was about three thousand feet, and I was conservative so there were quite a few thermals between Salem and Epping. I struggled in the narrow altitude band and had just about decided to give it up over New England Dragway at 800 feet when I got a real kick in a strong thermal that took me to about 3500 feet. I could see a sea breeze front forming along the coast and headed for it just as an F-111 Fighter/Bomber from Pease went under me and by me with a roar, maybe a thousand feet away. Down below me and not too far to my left was a very large runway speckled with military airplanes. With some haste, I tuned my state of the art 10 channel radio to the only common frequency we had...121.5, and called the Pease tower. They indicated that they knew I was there from a pilot report, and said I was in a good spot and if I was just passing through that I wasn't in their way. They wished me luck just as the F-111 made another pass, very slow, wheels and flaps extended and the nose high, rocking its wings. Much closer. The pilots were waving and smiling.
The sea breeze front was spectacular. I turned to follow the coast in lift and had a very scenic trip from Portsmouth to Brunswick at about 120 knots, staying just a few hundred feet below the cloud base at 4,500 ASL, and able to stay in the strip of lift that allowed me to eliminate any turns.
I arrived over Brunswick at about 6000 feet and turned inland toward Augusta, following Rt. I-295. At one point, I stuck the antenna of the walkie-talkie out the window and probably warned all the truckers in three states and two Maritime Provinces that there was a "Smokey with radar" just after the Bowdoinham exit. For the next 15 minutes I had to explain that, yes, I really was in a glider over Maine and was hoping to get to Old Town by the end of the day. I got several "Good Lucks" and a "No way, not without an engine".
Just north of Augusta, the lift began to dwindle at around 3 PM, and I kept my eyes open for breaks in the northern boreal forest that signified places to land. I arrived over Pittsfield at two thousand feet, and made several wide circles looking for lift. I found a couple of spots of 1-200 FPM and tried to use them, but they were too small. I could see the Old Town Airport just north of Bangor, it was about thirty miles away, with dense forest between me and it. Not in a borrowed ship. One last turn to look for a suitable field and halfway through it, I realized I was just off the end of the runway at the Pittsfield Regional Airport, set up perfectly for a long final glide to the ground. I called my position on the only Unicom frequency that my state of the art 10 channel radio had and put the wheel down.
With extra speed to carry me to the far end of the runway where all the buildings were, I lined up on the centerline and adjusted my flaps to put me on the ground halfway down the runway. A Cessna 172 pulled out onto the runway from the left and throttled up to take off just as I passed over at two hundred feet. I started to move over to the left for a landing on the grass, when I heard the throttle being cut on the 172. I touched down on the runway and rolled to the far end, turned left, and keeping the wings level, taxied up to the General Aviation terminal. A moment later, I heard the roar of the 172 as it tried again.
After leaving a message for the chase crew, and finding out that they were about two hours away, I had a little time to reflect. If I had attempted the flight earlier in the season than September 7, I probably could have made it to Old Town. I wasn't that disappointed though. I did have a state distance record of 164 miles, even though I fell short of my declared goal. And the scenery was super. And I learned a few things about the sea breeze front. And, most important of all, you can do a long flight in New England without getting too far from an airport. As I look back, I think that the planning part was the most fun; even though the flight was fun and scenic, the anticipation of the flight was more exciting than the flying part. Sooo, get out those maps and dream a little....
(*Courtesy of my friends Jon Winsor and Terry Sweeney, two very accomplished hang glider pilots.)
It has been brought to my attention that I have been elected to the Board of Directors of the GBSC. If it is a clever ploy to limit my comments in these columns, too bad. I was quite surprised and honored to be asked to serve on the board and will do all in my power to keep the club a fun thing to do. I am probably speaking for all the officers and directors when I say that we are here to listen and to act in your behalf on things that affect the club and its' members. Can we talk?
OK, here we go again. One winter day, when the gliders are covered with snowdrifts, you decide to rent a Cessna 172 at the Littletown Airport for an out and return cross-country flight to Bigville International Jetport, which is exactly 100 miles away. At about a hundred miles per hour, you anticipate a two hour flight and plan to be home in time for a big dinner with your in-laws. After take-off and climbout, you discover that you have a 50 MPH headwind, but press on to Bigville, secure in the knowledge that it will be a 50 MPH tailwind on the way home. What will your groundspeed have to be on the return trip in order to maintain your 100 MPH average for the entire trip? What will your Mother-in-Law say? Have fun!