Perry 2009

The idea hatched on a Saturday in January. I was shoveling several feet of extremely dense, compacted snow off the roof of my garage... and trying to keep a positive train of thought going while dealing with my most despised chore of the year.

It went something like this: "Yes, there are positive attributes to the state of New Hampshire and New England generally. For instance, we have roads, of a sort, and some of them lead South. If you drive far enough South, say about eight or ten New Hampshire lengths South, you can get to places that do, in fact, have civilized Winter weather, where folks aren't perpetually grumpy and gliders can be flown cross country during more than 1/3 of the year. Some combination of those roads will actually get you to a place like Perry, SC, where they can run a race in mid April with warm sunny weather...”

You get the idea.

One thing led to another, as these things sometimes do, and about a decade later (it seems – Winter was interminable this year) I'm headed down I-81 with crew chief John Boyce, through the rolling meadows of Virginia, admiring the redbuds and looking forward to a week of racing.

Yahoo! Happy pilot waits for another chance to go on an adventure.

Perry isn't much. Little more than a crossroads and a bright blue water tower. But Al Tyler and friends have built a great little airport here that can and does accommodate a 65 entry contest with ease. The atmosphere is much the same as New Castle (this is a good thing) less the mountains looming in the background. The hospitality is typically Southern, which is to say wonderful.

Practice days come and go with some local flying, practice final glides, making sure everything that worked last season still works. Weather is sort of lackluster (but warm and sunny!!) and we're all rusty to some extent.

Monday the wind is really howling and the race day is cancelled. Gusts to 30 knots on the ground at times. I fly anyway with a few other adventurous souls and bounce around in strong lift and stronger turbulence for a few hours.

Tuesday, racing begins and the rust starts to fall away. We rediscover our flying skills and the farther and faster we go, the better we feel. Flying is interspersed with cookouts, stories and beer. By week's end, we are racing Nascar style close but it is all done with grace and panache. We're all after a score, of course, but more important than the score is camaraderie and peer respect.

Where's a 2-33 when you need one? Perry contestants and crews

hang out in such shade as they can find, waiting for the launch.

One of the things I'm after this week is the chance to do some meaningful performance comparison flying. There are a couple of reasons for this. I'm flying a glider that – depending on which German factory you happen to be a fan of – could be described as “state of the art, circa 1985” or “not quite state of the art, circa 1985”. I want to know what I'm really up against in 2009. I already have a pretty good idea of how she does against the newer ships in a dry contest, but at Perry we are watered up and this changes things in interesting and not always obvious ways. Also... flying in proximity to other ships in competition affords the opportunity to try out subtly different approaches to thermaling and cruising and to see what works best for you and your ship.

The first good opportunity presents itself on Wed. My guinea pig is a front line 15m ship from one of the well known German manufacturers, absolutely state of the art. The World's had dozens of these things. I don't know the pilot well, but he seems to know what he's doing and we fly wing tip to wing tip for 20 – 25 miles. I comment on this later to a friend and sometimes mentor – let's call him “Racer X” – and he promptly deflates my bubble with a hearty laugh and says “If true, that suggests that the other guy has a genuinely stinky glider!” I don't press the point, but I'm not convinced.

Go Baby, Go! Full of water, full of confidence, 110 knots can't get me there fast enough!

Later in the week, rust fully removed, I happen on an enormous gaggle of 15m and standard ships on the same task. Leading the pack is a well known US Team member. The next course leg is long, largely blue. I almost never play tag-along, but this looks like another opportunity to do some close quarters comparison, so I join near the bottom/back... and hey, there's Racer X too, this might be fun.

The US Team member, as you'd expect, is setting a pretty respectable pace. A little too respectable for me, initially. 15 miles later, I'm clearly losing this race. I turn it up a notch or two and start looking for opportunities to make up some ground, find them, work them, start catching up. Another 30 miles later, I've worked into the dense part of the gaggle and I've found the way to get past most of these guys despite having an “old ship”. Racer X, by this time is flying along with Mr. US Team – he's found a way to work through this gaggle too. But it is tough to break away from the front – at the leading edge of the fleet you have to find and center all your own thermals and the added burden on these guys tends to keep the fleet together. Because of this, I am able to work through to the leading edge and finally Racer X and I head out of the top of a thermal more or less alone and I do something I've never done in 18 years of on and off competition flying: I latch on to his tail and slavishly follow every single move for the next 15 miles. A regular leech. The purpose is simple: I want to fly through the same air at the same speeds and find out for sure how the ship goes – this run is all about the airplane, although of course I'm paying attention to the decisions being made in the cockpit ahead as well and checking them against what I would do. He does something I don't like and I'm outta here. But naturally he doesn't (he's good at this).

The run goes better than hoped, and of course X has no idea what I'm up to because I'm at his six, about 8 seconds behind. Mr. X finds a good thermal and starts to turn, sees me and I swear I can hear his eyeballs go “Sproingggggg!” – because I was supposed to be left for dead in the last thermal.

Information gathered, point made, we thermal up, go our own ways and shortly we head into a soft area where the gaggle – now mostly behind us – disperses as guys run for whatever they think might keep them aloft. I end up low – something a fair bit under 2000 agl – a few miles from an airport, struggling over a cotton field in 1 knot chop, all alone. I can see other gliders here and there a few miles off doing about the same. My thermal starts to kick after five interminable minutes, Racer X shows up to collect a favor and the thermal fattens up to a respectable 3 – 4 knots. X then proceeds to out climb me handily, which I take to indicate that he's dumped his water (I am still full). But then at the top of the thermal he lights out at 90 knots and it is abundantly clear that he's still got all his water too. There are still some mysteries to solve! I don't like the way he's going, so I head 30 degrees left and don't see X again until we're on the ground. “What'd'ya think, do I keep the 'junky old glider'?” “Yep, that's a keeper.”

ASW-20B at week's end. Still kicking tail after all these years.

As the week draws to a close, we're all pretty happy. I've flown every single day I've been here, raced five out of a possible six, enjoyed the heck out of it and liked the results pretty well, too. Along the way I've met a bunch of new friends and learned a lot. Can't ask for better than that.

Special thanks to: John Boyce, Al & Rhonda Tyler, Ray Galloway, Russel Muschick, Leo & Pat Buckley and Line Crews and Tow Pilots Everywhere

-Evan Ludeman - T8