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Flight Reports Here's the place to share your story about a first, best, worst, unusual, educational, etc. flight. Send your stuff to newelljj@knightglider.com. Pictures? Send 'em too.
A Spring Flight to Knoxville By Tony Condon With excellent soaring conditions forecast for today, I decided totake the Cherokee on a trip. Sure wouldve been nice to put more miles on, but I fell out of booming skies after about an hour and a half flight. Made it about 50 nautical miles to a really nice field. Here is the report copied from another forum: The flight was really good. I got off tow in some
pretty good lift, After departing the airport I cruised for about
15 miles before I continued to the south, over Red Rock Lake and
in the general I made a quick call to Matt and my crew and took
a few pictures. no All in all it was a great day. Probably didnt
take full advantage of Here are some pictures from the day. The only in
flight photo was Photos posted at http://picasaweb.google.com/cherokee373Y/Soaring51808
Patches Takes to the Air By Paul McIlrath
After almost 2 years of
continuous work my 1-34 flew today!
Silver Duration: April 10, 2007 By
Tony Condon Here's
my flight report from today's escapades. When I got back into town last
Tony Drops in on an Amish Family, September 2006 By
Tony Condon The days are getting shorter, but with the crops coming out of the fields, and cool dry air moving in from the north, good soaring is still to be had. I was looking forward to flying on Thursday as I had the day off work and the conditions were looking favorable. The Boundary Layer depth was forecast to about 8000 feet with cloud base at 5-6000 above Sea Level. Overcast Development was also a possibility, which would cause some consternation later on. I had to go to school in the morning, and I spent my last class of the morning watching the cumulus clouds starting to pop up. Cloudbase was in the 4000 above ground area and the lift looked strong. There were also large areas of overdevelopment out there too, so I knew I’d have to be careful. I got to the airport and got everything prepped. Matt Michael had volunteered to chase me, which was a relief, and he had brought me some of his cold weather gear. With a high of only 58 forecast on the surface, it was sure to be could up high, and my legs, feet, and hands would most definitely feel it. I got all dressed up in polar survival gear and pulled the glider down to the runway. Barograph was set, water was full, and everything was in order. Roland Weiland was the towpilot for the day and came down to launch me. We took off and had pretty good climb rates, but it was awfully smooth. I was afraid that this was a sign of things to come, but finally we started to hit some bumps. As we got over the Towers dormitories at Iowa State, we hit a good bump. With the Variometer pegged at over 1000 feet per minute up, I figured we must be in good lift and got off at about 1800 feet above ground. I had been right and turned right into a nice 500 foot per minute thermal. I enjoyed a quick climb to just about 6000 feet, and departed the airport to the southeast, downwind. I lost only 1000 feet over the next 5 miles or so, and caught another 500 foot per minute thermal and was blasted back up to over 6000 feet. It seemed like all I had to do was stay in the sun and I would be fine, so that’s what I did. I instructed Matt that I would start heading towards Newton, and he did a good job of staying under me. I arrived at Newton at about the one hour mark. Overcast was still rampant to the East so I elected to work my way more to the South and head towards Pella. I got down to 3000 feet in this area so I spent some time climbing back up over the Newton Prison. This also helped me kill some time so the overcast could move out. I made it down to Pella in about 45 minutes from Newton, doing a pretty good job of staying high. There was some streeting action, and I took advantage of it as best as I could. Evaluating the lift conditions led me to follow the Des Moines River southeast from Pella towards Oskaloosa. Here I found a good looking street although it had a lower cloudbase than I had previously seen, about 5700 above sea level. It was in the shade but from the looks of the cloud, it looked like the lift was very strong so I headed towards it. The lift was as advertised, with over 500 foot per minute registering on the variometer. Once reaching cloudbase, I nosed over and at one point was going 90 mph just to stay level. I shot off the end of the street to find myself with a lot of altitude but not a lot of options. I was out in the middle of a big shadow, so I had to turn to the side and run back into the sunlight. I got pretty low between Oskaloosa and Ottumwa. I was just barely local to the Oskaloosa airport, but didn’t want to head that way as it was in the shadow and would be a sure doomsday move. I stayed out in the sun by the river and found some lift with the help of my crew. Matt had stayed caught up with me and had parked next to the road underneath me. He was right next to a nice pasture that would’ve made a great airport when he saw a flock of seagulls headed towards me. At first he thought I was marking the thermal for them, as I was barely climbing, but then they started circling between him and me, and climbing fast! With this info, I headed towards Matt and contacted some good lift that took me back up to over 6000 feet. I was right next to the Ottumwa airport by this point and was feeling good about my progress. 3 hours had passed since launch. I continued along the river, in the sun. I continued down the river, staying around 5000 feet or above for a few more miles. I got to the town of Eldon, IA and was faced with a decision. Matt had told me reminded me of the Memphis, MO airport about 25 miles to the south of me. It seemed like I had caught up with the overdevelopment and that heading southeast was not going to work. There was a band of shadow to the south of me too, but sunlight on the other side, with a few cumulus clouds which held some promise. I saw a small town out ahead with a pasture or two on the west side that looked like a grass runway. I headed for that, figuring I would have a good place to land if I couldn’t connect. I was also really hoping to make it to Missouri, as it would be extra cool to make it to another state! As I went across the shadow, it was maybe 3 miles of steady sink, about 2-300 feet per minute down. It was looking grim but I was getting closer to the sun. Finally I got down below 3000 feet, then below 2500. I was not finding any lift, even in the sun. I had aimed for a pasture west of town, but then decided that one next to it was better, as it had better access. I gave up at a pretty high altitude, knowing that there was no lift to be had. I circled around the field a couple times, then flew my traffic pattern over the small town to read the water tower, and slipped the glider nicely into the freshly mowed hay field. While on final I noticed a couple in a pickup pulling out of a driveway looking at me and then I saw about 30 people standing in the driveway to the house I was landing next to. It turns out that the farm belonged to an Amish family. They were super friendly and very curious. It seemed that gliders don’t land in Milton, IA every day! All the standard questions were asked, and the kids payed very close attention to everything going on. Matt showed up about 10 minutes after I touched down and we started slowly derigging while conversing with the locals. They went to find the local newspaper reporter but she was gone. Our new friends helped take the glider apart and get it on the trailer. The kids found the tail attach bolts that fell out of my pocket. It was quite possibly the perfect land out! The statistics came out to 103 Nautical Miles straight line, or 190 kilometers. Duration was 3 hours 50 minutes and maximum altitude was 6,500 above Sea Level. Hopefully I will be able to claim silver altitude with this flight. The fall XC season has just begun! 
Fifteen
Years – A Summary by Jim Hard When the SSA announced the
World Distance Award (WDA) program to begin early in 1992, my first thought was,
“Jim, this is your kind of program, let’s go for it.”
And my second thought was to estimate how long it would take to fly the
40,000 kilometers (about 25,000 miles) cross-country in the type of ship I was
flying, a Schweizer 1-26, and in the area that I intended to do the flights, the
upper Midwest. That estimate came
out to be 17 years; based on the mileage I thought that I could accomplish each
year. My third thought was a
question to myself whether I would live long enough to do it. Fifteen soaring seasons later, in late June of 2006, the
questions were answered when, with Roger Payne as retrieve crew, I exceeded the
goal of 40,000 kilometers during a flight of about 197 miles from Faribault MN
to Cable WI. The effort to achieve the award
was significant; a total of 168 cross-country flights were required; the vast
majority of them being straight-out flights.
A large number of the flights, 71 of them, began at Stanton Airfield,
home of the Minnesota Soaring Club. Another
51 began at Benson’s Airport in White Bear Lake, home of the Red Wing Soaring
Association. The folks at Cross
Country Soaring, operating out of the Faribault Municipal Airport, assisted in
the launch of another 18 flights. The balance of the flights originated at other
upper Midwest airports such as Osceola WI, Cavalier ND, and Albert Lea MN. To
get back home from the straight-out flights required the assistance of retrieve
crews; I am indebted to 29 different individuals who acted as crew chiefs.
At the top of the retrieve crew list is Kathleen Winters who made 32 of
them. Don Patterson and Roger Payne
each made 20 or more retrieves. Next
was JC Cunningham with more than 10. Walt
Johnson and Paul Esser each made five or more.
And 23 other individuals, too numerous to name in this summary,
volunteered to fetch me on the balance of the straight-out flights.
I am struggling with the question of how to properly acknowledge the help
from all my retrieve crews. At this
point I can only offer them all a hearty “Thank you for your time and efforts
in finding me and seeing that we got home safely.” Believing that I am the first person in the upper Midwest (north of Illinois) to receive the World Distance Award and also that I am the first Schweizer 1-26 pilot anywhere to receive it adds to my feeling of accomplishment.
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