Don the Ironman Towpilot writes:
Peter emailed and asked what wave week was like. Here is a short summary.
From the first Saturday through the next Saturday, it was all high-pressure warm stable air. Wind was calm on the ground, temperatures in the 70s made for short pants and T-shirt weather, the only flights were soaring or minor ridge lift on the Carters and Moriah.
Karl drove up with his RV and held a campfire the first several nights with supper and stories. About 10 or more pilots assembled for the evenings events.
After Saturday’s cold front blew through,the wind picked up to about 30 on the summit, and was blowing a steady 10 to 15 with higher gusts on the ground. Wind was mostly down the runway, but still had its squirrelly moments. One take off, I started the tow with a head wind, a third of the way on the roll had a bunch of left aileron in correcting for air spilling off of Pine Mountain, a couple hundred feet later the wind sock was standing out straight with a cross wind from the right, and by the time I was off the ground and climbing it was a straight on head wind again.
Cloud cover on Sunday kept anyone from launching until about 1 PM. Six guys launched and were in week wave up to about 14 K. They were finding it mostly between the horn and Carter Dome. I heard once that Dan found some wave on the east end of the golf course.
All said we probably had about 40 tows for the whole week. I have not looked up the exact number.
Gorham/Mount Washington is a great place to fly even if you’re not looking for wave. It was really enjoyable for me in the tow plane to be able to learn the area without having to fly through the turbulence machine each time. I did get some tighten my seat belt moments (after it was already tightened) on Sunday.
My impression is most of the pilots participating were from GBSC and FSA.
A big thanks to Sonny and David for making two each 4 hour round trips to bring trailers to Gorham, to Dan for fueling the tow plane and trailer without being asked, to Tim and Dennis for coordinating logistics and planning, to Andy for towing on the first Saturday and helping deliver myself on the last Sunday. It takes a lot of effort from PMSC and the other cubs to make this happen.
