My first "Landout"

[vontresc]

Well I finally had my first "landout" today. While I did make it to a paved runway, I still landed somewhere other than the home field.

Didn't get going until later in the day. By the time I launched the bases had gotten up to around 3,000' AGL and I got off at 2,000' in a pretty decent thermal. got up to cloud base, and decided that today would be a good day to venture away from the airport. So I decided to head towards Fond du Lac, and see what I could find. It started out ok, but I pretty soon found myself stuggling at 1,200' AGL Trying to get back up. After making it back up to cloud base I figured I could go on. so my next waypoint was the landing strip next to the Quad Graphics printing plane in Lomira.

http://skyvector.com/perl/coords?lat=43.631&lon=-88.452&scale=1
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou...0093,-88.445456&spn=0.01266,0.021865&t=h&z=16

The clouds there looked pretty good, but nothing was to be found :-(. I spent some time looking over the printing plant hoping the flat roof would provide some lift but none was to be found. At that point it was time to pull the plug. After landing I got out, and tried to figure out what to do next. Before I knew it I had a small gaggle of kids asking me all sorts of questions about where i'd come from, and why there was no engine . I spent the next 45 minutes doing show and tell about my glider.

In the mean time I had gotten a hold of one of my fellow club pilots who relayed back to the club. I managed to arrange an aero retrieve, once Paul (our tow pilot for the day) got done towing students. A little after 5 we got back into the air, and thanks to one of the kids I even had a wing runner. We ended up just climbing until I had enough altitude to glide back to Hartford. I got off at about 5,300' AGL, and had a blast coming back down.

Didn't go very far, but I had a great time doing it. Here's the OLC trace.
http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?flightId=1244610923

Pete

 

[Let'sgoflying!]

Very nice, Pete!

 

[brcase]

I took my HP16 to the King Mountain Glider Park this week for their Grand Opening. Friday I launched late and struggled to gain altitude. It took me 45 minutes to work my way 10 miles north of the airport. I started getting a head ache and was working hard to stay up and decided I would make it a short flight. I didn't want to just glide back to the airport so I decided I would tough it out another 15 miles or so up to Mt Borah and then just glide back to the airport. About 3 miles from Mount Borah I hit a 6+ kt thermal ( 600 ft/min) and climbed to 17,900 feet. I then headed West under a cloud street and at 100 kts trying to stay below 18,000. I went about 5 miles without loosing any altitude and headed for the Copper Basin Airport (highest published airport in Idaho 7900 ft MSL) to add some distance in to my glide back to King Mountain. I stopped over Copper basin for a few turns in a thermal and decided to glide over the Antelope airport, Arco Airport an back to King Mountian. After turning the Arco airport at 12,000 feet I head north up the ridge for about 25 miles miles and was at 13,000 feet without turning. I then thermaled with a friend for a few turns followed another cloud street for a was gaining even more altitude and flew back to Arco and back to King mountain. I really had to work to get down, The Wave was starting to run and I think some impressive altitudes (we have a wave window this year) may have been possible. To bad I wasn't feeling better . Still ended up with over a 2 hour flight. The flight is posted on the OLC if you want to see it.

Brian Case

 

[vontresc]

Wow that sounds like a hell of a day. Heck around here we are having a monster day if we can get over 6,000' agl I'd love to have to push over hard to stay below FL 180.

 

[Ted]

Very cool, Pete! Now figure out how to soar your way to Pennsylvania.

 

[rottydaddy]

That must be kinda fun, dropping into the lives of people who don't know anything about soaring. Maybe one of those kids will take it up someday, because of your "misfortune". That must take the sting out of landing out...

 

[tonycondon]

landing out, to me, has never included a sting. it just opens the next chapter of the adventure, usually after a flight where you had a battle of wits with mother nature and travelled as far as possible with the energy you were given.

with high performance gliders the norm, dedicated crew hard to come by, and straight distance tasks completely missing from contest flying, some people have begun to treat landing out as failure. i think the opposite way. where is the fun in ending up at the exact same spot you started?

 

[vontresc]

landing out, to me, has never included a sting. it just opens the next chapter of the adventure, usually after a flight where you had a battle of wits with mother nature and travelled as far as possible with the energy you were given.

with high performance gliders the norm, dedicated crew hard to come by, and straight distance tasks completely missing from contest flying, some people have begun to treat landing out as failure. i think the opposite way. where is the fun in ending up at the exact same spot you started?

Well Said, Tony!

 

[SCCutler]

landing out, to me, has never included a sting. it just opens the next chapter of the adventure, usually after a flight where you had a battle of wits with mother nature and travelled as far as possible with the energy you were given.

with high performance gliders the norm, dedicated crew hard to come by, and straight distance tasks completely missing from contest flying, some people have begun to treat landing out as failure. i think the opposite way. where is the fun in ending up at the exact same spot you started?

Another reminder, Tony's not a technician, he is an artist.

 

[rottydaddy]

landing out, to me, has never included a sting. it just opens the next chapter of the adventure, usually after a flight where you had a battle of wits with mother nature and travelled as far as possible with the energy you were given.

with high performance gliders the norm, dedicated crew hard to come by, and straight distance tasks completely missing from contest flying, some people have begun to treat landing out as failure. i think the opposite way. where is the fun in ending up at the exact same spot you started?

A healthy attitude... I guess it really only warrants cussing if you're flying in a comp, or you end up breaking the glider.
Or... if you're in my situation, where we have no trailer for the 2-33, so unless I get to an airport where it can be towed out, it's going to be a huge PITA and ruin many people's flying plans for the day.