Season's End Again

What an interesting soaring season I had!  I accomplished my goal of earning my commercial glider pilot's license and my son decided that soaring was a passionate interest for him.  Meanwhile, I developed a new motto to deal with the awful weather - "Never pass up a good flying day."

That held true even yesterday, the last day of scheduled ops for 2011 on Harris Hill.  I'd gone up there to meet with one of our club members to discuss some business but the weather looked so good I convinced my son to go with me.  "We'll only be a little while...,"  I told my wife.  I've been soaring long enough for her to see right through that lie.

It was quite cool, but when I said hello to some of the folks there it became quickly apparent that the conditions were really quite good for soaring.  After a few minutes of discussion, Kevin and I decided that it would be foolish to pass up conditions like these, especially since we probably won't fly regularly until April at best.

After deciding to fly the ASK-21, I put Kevin in front and off we went.  It took almost no time to get to altitude because Tim Welles, our tow pilot, knows how to tow through thermals and uses them to shorten the time on tow.  We got off at 2,000 above ground (3,700 on the altimeter) and were immediately in lift.

I'd turned over the flying duties to Kevin shortly after takeoff and he did a good job of keeping us in the lift as we climbed over the valley North of Harris Hill.  It looked like there was cloud streeting, so we decided to push out along the street to see if we could go anywhere.  In most cases, we saw zero sink and when we reached the South end of the street, we found 4 knots of lift that strengthened and turned into 6 knots!

Cloud streets are horizontal lines of clouds that are usually indicative of thermal activity

Kevin took us up close to the bottom of the nice, dark cumulus cloud and we topped out at 5,800 feet, a new record altitude for him.  We stayed up about 45 minutes and returned when we began to get cold.  I flew a passenger later at the end of the day and we did some stalls, a wingover, some zero-g pushovers and had a generally good time together. 

My landings in the ASK-21 are getting much more precise and I've been able to touchdown exactly where I wanted to and make those long slow rollouts balanced on the center wheels all the way up to the flight line.  Quite often, the juniors on the line will catch the wing before it touches the ground.

My goals this year were to get my commercial license and to do a better job of handling the ASK-21, especially on landing.  While I've felt competent in the 21, I now feel much more confident in it.  It's a good way to end the soaring season.