Memorable Day

 Wow.  Evan (T8) flew 750 OLC kilometers today.

Weekday report May 20

It was the best day in a long time:  low clouds, a crosswind breeze, and cold.  But at least it wasn't raining!

Tim and Greg, heroes both, decided to force the issue and put on a day of training, daring any student to show up for some pattern tows in the 2-33.  Two took the bait, new member Jeff Bernard and Erzo.  The two of them got some great flight and ground instruction from Greg, while Tim did the towing.

Here's a picture of Jeff getting ready for his third flight.  Note the winter hat and down jacket.

The forecast is for more of the same weather for several more days.

Together, then apart

 The soaring weather has been so crummy so far that we've begun grasping at straws.  Perhaps we should do that more often.

Last night the forecast for today was "mostly cloudy," which sounds a whole lot better than "rain all day."  Indeed, the sky was grey all morning.  But that didn't prevent the four desperados from showing up and rigging their gliders.

Here's a nice view of a completely unpromising sky:

Tim (BU), Greg (JR), Peter (HG), and DaveB (NT) launched in rapid succession (4 takeoffs in 21 minutes), and even though there were no shadows on the ground, they were able to stay up!

It is interesting to compare the flights of JR (red) and BU (cyan):

For the first half of the flight, they flew together, advising each other of climb rates and trying to stay out of each other's way in the haze.  They wandered across the river and found their first good climb over Mount Cube.  Then they split up and went their separate ways.

Tim eventually went back to Vermont and found a good thermal to 6000 feet.  He landed just after it started to get sunny on the ground.  A three hour flight, not bad!

Lightweight report

Peter K writes: 

This is for anyone who is interested in the Hang Gliding world. Maybe just Rick…. 

I just got home from the Bobby Bailey Hang Gliding Nationals in Groveland, Florida.

First thing to state is that I do hang gliding competitions for pure fun. Like-minded pilots, a formal task and a dedicated retrieve driver make it very fun. I try not to come in last, but often I am close.

I had three practice days to try to remember how to fly after not flying since last Spring down there. Just like in my Discus at Post Mills.

First Comp task was a 135 km box around the Green Swamp, finishing by flying over Seminole-Lake Gliderport and back to our takeoff. Very difficult in a hang glider. I made it to within 12 km of the goal. I flew 5 hrs 15 mins. In addition to not making it, I missed the first turnpoint due to my well-documented technology issues… Great day. Would've been 7th…. Near zero score. OOPS.

I won’t go into details about every day. On the second to last day, I was too slow and decided not to fly over the city of Groveland to get home. I flew 93 km.

The task on the last day was a 106 km bow tie. I had a very bad Start, behind everyone else. I flew the entire Task alone, which is hard. And that made me think a lot. It was a very good day with 7000 foot cloudbase and light wind. I made it home with 900 feet and 4 hrs15 mins. A great way to finish.

All in all, including short practice flights, I flew 20 hours and nine days in a row. That might be my record.

I hope I brought some better wx back with me…

Milestone

This is the 1000th PMSC News blog post.

Andy wrote the first one on June 18, 2007. I wished him luck and said that blogging would never catch on.

Here are some other posts I remember:

Five days in Franconia

Greg's Private Pilot checkride

Control disconnect at Bermuda High

Introduction to Mifflin

Introduction to New Castle

Introduction to Perry

Lafayette Noda

Charlie Spratt

Peter Betts

Eric's first trip to Mount Washington

Pete and Mike's aerobatic video

Wave flight out of Post Mills by Andy Kozak

Night flight

600 flights in 2014

Getting a motel room in Gorham

Two new CFIs

Don't let this happen to you

Sonny's outlanding

Moshe's outanding

Moshe's other outlanding

Late season flight by Lane

Tim's outlanding

The reddest tree in Vermont

Sam's first solo

Jason's first solo

Don's new glider

Dan showing off

L19 trailer retrieve

Seven days in a row

Best day ever

Coldest day of the year

Best dressed pilot

Tim's altitude record

Rick's introduction to hang glider pilots

Double outlanding

Henry's first solo

Karl's Private Pilot checkride

Two guys discussing the hazards of Post Mills

John Good's first water landing

Three handsome guys

Relentlessly bad

Today:

Tomorrow:

This week:

In spite of the weather

Even though the weather has not been cooperative so far this year (especially on the weekends!), members have been squeezing in their checkrides when they can.  Full credit to the members for taking this annual requirement seriously.

Here's a photo of Greg and DaveB inspecting the Blanik yesterday:

And here's a trivia question: What procedural mistake is illustrated by this photo? Leave your answer in the comments.

Spiffy

Everyone knew it as Perry

 The Region 5N contest in Wagener, South Carolina has just ended.  Everyone calls it "Perry," after another town nearby, but nobody knows why.

The Perry contest is one of the largest on the US calendar, certainly the largest Regional contest.  This year there were 62 entries in 4 classes (Open, 18m, 15m/Std, and Sports).  Evan was there in the 18m Class.

Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate, and half the days were scrubbed.  On the three valid racing days, Evan came in 3rd, 14th, and 5th for an overall finish in 10th place.  It was a good showing on his part, and his successful use of his powerplant on the second valid day indicates that we'll probably never have to retrieve him again out of Post Mills.

The contest results are here, and all of his flight log files are here.

Another wave flight

Moshe writes about April 23:

Wild spring day. Thermals were higher than expected, so I headed out cross-country to the northeast, across the wind. But I found rather poor thermals from near Moosilauke to the Franconia area.  I chose not to go to the mountains which were even farther downwind.

Instead I headed upwind (northwest) to try to get within range of Dean - and stumbled into wave!

I climbed to 13000 feet, but with a 50-knot wind across my course line, the 32 miles glide back home was still a challenge - and the arrival altitude promised by the glide computer was completely meaningless.

I tried to make way crabbing sideways within the up-wave.  But that was very slow, and it also wasn't leading in quite the right direction.  So I plunged upwind through wave sink to the next wave cycle.  In my low-performance glider that cost a lot of altitude!

Back in the Post Mills area, it was very turbulent below 3000 feet, so the landing was "interesting" too. 

Visibility was great, The Whites were "right there," and I could see Lake Champlain through the Waterbury gap in the Greens.

In retrospect, I think the Franconia area was in down-wave, thus the bad thermals. Had I gone downwind closer to the mountains then maybe I could have found up-wave - or not, as the wind would interact with the mountains.  The few clouds I saw in the area with bad thermals looked curly, so they must have been roll clouds. The thermal that threw me into the wave increased to 10 knots up high near the upwind edge. The wave lift was about 4 knots, weaker at 13000 feet, but I was reluctant to go higher without oxygen.

Flight log here.

Three in the Wave

Another cool, clear and windy day on Tuesday.

It was Andy's last day of availability as a tow pilot for a while, and three members took advantage. All three had good wave flights.

Greg (JR) worked his way upwind in thermals until he contacted the wave a few miles east of Breadloaf Mountain. That took him all the way up to 17000 feet. Then he worked the wave crosswind to Mount Mansfield. From there he made a long glide back to Post Mills.

Tim (BU) made a similar flight to the northwest.  He didn't get as high as Greg, but he made three separate climbs to 13000 feet as he made his way upwind to Sugarbush.

Finally, AndyK (2R) headed west at first and got relatively low near Tunbridge, but was able to find the best climb of the day (5 knots) and reached 14000 feet over Carrier.

So far this season it's been all about wave.

Andy headed to the flight line

Inactive member

 

Inventing the Wheel

 Every 15 years or so, I take apart the mainwheel of a 2-33.  It happens so seldom that I have no memory of how the glider's undercarriage is designed when I attempt to do it again.

A few of us showed up yesterday, with the hope of flying, but the weather did not cooperate.  Instead, we did some maintenance.  Don and Greg worked on the Blanik interior, which is much improved, thanks to their efforts.  Tim decided to inspect the mainwheel bearings of the 2-33, and DaveB, Andy, and I helped on that project.

The first step is to place a log under the skid and hoist the tail onto a sawhorse perch.  This raises the wheel off the ground and allows it to be removed.  Once the wheel is out, the fun begins.

The wheel/brake assembly consists of at least 50 individual parts, all of which must be accounted for during the disassembly.  Tim and I tried hard to memorize how it came apart, so we could put it back together properly.  My concern for reversibility prevented me from properly appreciating the engineering that went into this wheel.  Until today.

 Most of those 50 parts were custom designed and manufactured by hand in limited batches.  No wonder gliders are expensive!  I can picture Ernie Schweizer spending a few weeks in 1966 with his engineering drawings, lathe and calipers - to come up with all those shafts, spacers, covers, housings and seals that comprise the wheel.  The bearings, shoes, and pads are probably from automotive stock, but designing a glider wheel around those parts must have been challenging, as well.  I'm sure the wheel was derived from the 2-22 wheel, vintage 1946.  I wonder what improvements were made twenty years later.

 Anyway, Tim and I greased the bearings and put it all back together (unsuccessfully, on the first attempt, oh well), and reinstalled the wheel just as it started to rain.

Glider maintenance, like flying, is challenging and satisfying.  Both give you an appreciation for those who made it possible in the first place.

Wave Flight

 Tim writes about April 17:

Actually, it was a rotor/wave flight.

It was a tough start.  There were few clouds to start and those quickly evaporated.  I took a high tow (5K) to the west because if I didn't connect off tow I would have a second chance downwind of the airport.  Sure enough, I couldn't find wave lift near Miller Pond so I headed downwind before I got too low.  I was able to work rotor while drifting downwind.  I guess the wind was about 30 knots.  The lift was sometimes 14 knots in half a turn and minus 14 knots in the other half.  I was able to climb to about 8500 feet as I drifted almost to Mt. Cube.  Was able to work scraps of wave to about 9500 feet but was never well established.  Wind was now about 45 knots.

Moosilauke, Franconia Ridge and Mt. Washington from 9,500 feet

After 2.5 hours I had enough and was going to "declare victory" and land.  Pushing upwind northwest of the airport I found a spot of well-organized rotor lift that turned into wave and went up to 11,000 feet.  This was real wave lift - smooth, consistent and spread over a large area.  Even though there were no cloud markers you could fly carefully and stay in lift (the sink wasn't bad either).  I was able to explore a little and got up to 14,000 feet in the 60 knot wind.  The high winds made it slow to get around but the view was spectacular.  There wasn't a cloud from Canada to Massachusetts.

Below is the SkySight wave prediction and a satellite image from early morning.  And check out this flight to Mt. Washington in a motor glider.

First Slacker Day

 The weather pattern so far this season has been disappointing.  We seem to get a beautiful day about once per week.  The six intervening days are usually quite horrible, with grey skies and every possible mix of precipitation.  Here's hoping the pattern ends soon.

Yesterday was the one beautiful day.  A Slacker Day was hastily arranged the day before, and Andy agreed to be the towpilot.  The day began with no clouds at all and very little wind.  The forecast was for moderate lift to 4500 feet.  They got the altitude right, but not the lift strength.  It was a struggle to stay in the air, giving us some good early season practice.

Tim (BU), who is the only pilot logging his flights on OLC so far this year managed 75 kilometers.  Greg (JR) headed out to Dean but got low most of the way there, nearly landing in a field.  He got back up and came home.

Local flights were made by Paul and Moshe in the Blanik and by Rick and Shawn in the 2-33.  Shawn then had a short flight in the 1-26.

A modest but definite start to the soaring season.  It is fair to say that we haven't missed a good day yet.

Assembly Day

 After a bit of confusion on the Forum about whether the weather would be suitable for assembling gliders, and a last minute decision to go for it, we gathered at the airfield yesterday and got to work.

The ground was just barely firm enough, and the air was just barely warm enough to get things done.

It was a fine turnout.  Andy, Dave, Dennis, Greg, Henry, Kari, Klaus, Leslie, Moshe, Paul, Peter, Rick, Shawn, and Tim pitched in and assembled two gliders and fetched several others from storage.  It looks like a gliderport again, with two gliders tied down and about 10 trailers parked in the assembly area.

And we flew!  The instructors bootstrapped themselves into currency and proceeded to give field checks to a few members.

Welcome to the 2025 season!

Spring Training

 It's not quite Opening Day, but the die-hards are in the air already.

Greg, Tim, Andy, and Don unwrapped the Blanik, assembled it, and made two flights today.  The conditions were good, albeit a bit breezy.

Congratulations to the early birds!

Oh, yeah, the golf cart broke as well.