Veni, Volavi, Valedixi or "How I spent all day with my family and still flew Hat Creek in the evening"

June 21, 2008

Ok, so "Veni, Volavi, Valedixi" doesn't have the poetic simplicity of "Veni, Vidi, Vici" ("I came, I saw, I conquered" as Julius Caesar said after conquering some place in modern Turkey), but (I think) it means "I came, I flew, I said goodbye", and that pretty much sums up my participation in the BAPA annual summer solstice Hat Creek fly-in held on June 20-21 2008.

The flying itself was below average since the famous Hat Creek glass-off didn't happen. But it was my first flight at this site, and the trip was notable for other reasons.

Since Hat Creek is a 5 hour drive from Fremont, and the flying only happens late in the evening, most people take friday off, and fly friday and saturday evening if they can. I felt a bit guilty about leaving Jo and Chinmay for 3 days, and was thinking of just going saturday-sunday. But that's a lot of driving for a 1-2 hour flight. So I suggested that Jo come along, she agreed, and we ended up going on friday anyway, but not to fly since she wanted to stay in the railroad park resort in Dunsmuir, about 70 miles away from Hat Creek. This is a hotel where the rooms are all cabooses on tracks. Chinmay would love it we thought.

Railroad Park resort, Dunsmuir

Caboose cabin

At 7am on saturday, the sound of raindrops on the caboose's roof woke me up. WTF, I thought. No no no, there's a glass off scheduled for today! It was overcast, and looked like thunderstorms were possible. But the light was great and I had a good time photographing the grounds of the hotel and Chinmay.

Railroad Park resort grounds

After a hearty breakfast in Dunsmuir, we checked out Hedge Creek falls. It's a short 5 minute hike, but I was concerned for Jo as she's 5 months along. But she was ok with it.

Hedge Creek falls, Dunsmuir

Now it was 11, and there were no signs of clearing. Called Mihir, and happy that he picked up. Turned out that he got skunked by work and never came! Anyway, he was bummed but happy to hear of the thunderstorms, and read the forecast for Burney to me: thunderstorms, partly cloudy, thunderstorms again at 5. Well, yesterday had been a scorcher, but without the sun, not only no glass-off, but with t-storms not likely to be flyable either.

Went to the lavender farm north of Weed, and took lots of pictures of an iconic landscape. This place is only open for a month in the year, and we are lucky we caught it on this trip. Came down via lake Siskiyou, and were at McCloud off 89 around 3pm. Decided that since the possibility of getting skunked was high, might as well do the McCloud railway excursion train for Chinmay.

Lavender farm and Mt Shasta

Yellow wildflowers and Mt. Shasta (Rt. 97)

McCloud Railway excursion train

Left McCloud around 5:30pm, reached Hat creek around 6:30pm, and tried radioing. Got Ann, and she said conditions looked pretty bad and they were already on their third cocktail. Well, I thought I would check out the launch anyway. Drove up on the unpaved road, much to Jo's concern that she would have to drive down the same way, and got to launch. Met Kevin, Mike, Chip, Ann, Carl, and Kurt. Most folks had a great time yesterday, although noone got too high.

After 20 minutes or so, conditions suddenly improved and Shad launched and seemed to stay above launch easily. Chinmay started bugging me incessantly as to why I wasn't flying yet. The worst pressure is from your own toddler; time to go! Got ready, launched, and had a 20-25 minute ridge soaring flight. This was the first time that Jo and Chinmay saw me fly in person, and Chinmay was excited as hell. Jo said that after I launched, some folks who had to wait longer for cycles to come through also had to endure Chinmay loudly asking her why they were taking so long! A 4 year old on launch can be dangerous.

My launch (with all BAPA members present assisting - respect!)

Chinmay's shot of the flying

Chinmay shows how you have to BEND your knees as you run for launch

Flying Hat creek (blue glider is me)

Mt. Lassen to the south, Mt. Shasta to the north, and Chinmay sitting on the bench waving to me as I shouted out to him passing by launch provided the eye-candy as half-a-dozen PGs and HGs boated back and forth along the ridge, about 100 feet above launch. The lift started dying, I floated over to the LZ and landed. Jo and Chinmay saw me land, and were at the LZ 10-15 minutes later as I was finishing my packing. Said my goodbyes, and I was back to being a dad and husband. Checked into the Rippling waters resort about 5 miles away, and had a great dinner to end an awesome day. To do so much with family and then cap it with a flight in the end makes for one extraordinary day indeed! I may fly here again someday, and may have a much longer or higher flight, but this one is special nonetheless!

Gone fishing!

Blitzkreig Dunlap

June 6, 2008

"It's gonna be a tight one", said Mihir, referring to the crowded gaggles we might fly in judging from the turnout of pilots in the LZ for another BAPA fly-in. Well, we were already piled in the back seat, and were hoping that the thermals would generate some steam heat:

Ay-O-Let's go, Ay-O Let's go!

sang the Ramones in my head as we sped up to launch in Kevin's Element. This fly-in and coop was supposed to be at Potato but was rescheduled to Dunlap again after an iffy forecast for the spud. Too bad we thought, and felt worse when Kevin described his flight there the previous weekend where he got up to 12,500 ft and had a tremendous cross country glide.

I haven't flown since the last Dunlap outing on April 26th. Had to go to India for 6 days to attend my cousin's wedding, then to Japan to have meetings at Fujitsu Labs. After that I was wrapped up in getting a plasma TV, attending yet more birthday parties, hosting relatives visiting from India, and generally spending time with wife and son. I find that flying becomes a vague dream as soon as I leave the hills and coast, and after a large context switch like the above, even become apprehensive about flying. Unlike in photography, this is an activity that you need to constantly stay focused on (well, photography without focus would also suck), or else you soon start feeling out of it.

Carl (?) launching pretty smoothly

Mihir felt the same way, and as a result, he, Bob, and I were the last to launch, standing around debating whether it was too strong (gusts were reaching 15 mph) or too bumpy, but really being a bit wimpy from the lack of flying. I mean everyone else launched, and our waiting around only meant that things would get worse. And it didn't help that most people seemed to have lousy launches with tip folds and surges and turns. Anyway, Bob did launch, then Mihir, and I, dead last. By this time the people who had launched about 90 minutes earlier and had sunk out were back for the second round.

Mihir launches, also smoothly

I had a great launch, and like everyone else, had no trouble staying up to the left of launch. Soon found a great thermal generated by a rocky spine that took me up to 5700 ft, and rode that thing up and down many times. There was a prevailing wind from the northwest through the valley that would keep pushing me back, but I could easily come back and find that thermal.

Unlike last time, things were more turbulent. I had to consciously correct my surges several times, and some of the tight turns to stay in the fastest part of the thermals (900 fpm) had me feeling dizzy and weightless. This was an active flying day even in the stable Arcus. Needless to say, even with the addition of the "grypton" tripod to my chest harness, video or photography was out of question. Too much concentration required for flying.

Shared the same thermal with Mihir and Mike, and again I need to work on entering these gaggles with more distance, even though once it felt like my thermal and theirs sort of "merged" and we found ourselves in the same one, making it seem like I had 'barged' in. Mihir wanted to stay low most of the time because of the high winds aloft that had been forecast. I didn't find anything unusual even at 5700 ft where I topped out and wanted to stay as high as possible.

After a while, I got tired of using the same thermal, and decided to go across the valley where I saw others staying up. This thoughtless decision would give me a good learning experience.

Instead of lift, I hit severe sink everywhere. By now I was in front of the red barn and the property where you are not supposed to land. I sank out so much that at one point a clearing in the forrest in front of that property seemed like the bailout LZ that I would have to come down in. This was a terrifying prospect, given the trees all around it, and even some in the middle. Luckily, I found a small thermal above it that gave me a few hundred feet. It would peter out quickly though, and after two passes through it, I thought I could make the alternate LZ now.

When we launched, we had been told that the school LZ was occupied by kids today, so I didn't even consider it, although it turned out that the game had ended, and people had started landing there. I started sinking again, and now wondered if I would clear the power lines that surrounded the little field in front of the LZ, the field with the abandoned RV. Luckily I cleared them and sank like a stone to be able to put it down in that field without incident, despite flaring hard and early from two feet off the ground. After landing, I felt compelled to kiss the ground! Hiked out to the Dunlap Inn parking lot where Ron picked me up.

'LZ': Looked much worse from above.

Lesson: pay attention to the prevailing wind and glide! I was done in by gliding against the wind for a long distance over terrain that had no bailouts. I should have instead gone south east towards Dan's LZ and made that my landing place. Apparently, he doesn't care if we land there, so not sure why they tell us to only use it in an emergency. That's what Mihir did. Also in the south-east direction you have the horse corral and other possible LZs. I took the worst possible path I think.

All in all, I do not think that the place I landed is particularly bad; XC pilots do this sort of thing all the time. But it was a first for me, to land in a place where I had no intention of landing. This is really the first flight where my launch was the least of my problems! The flying was active and turbulent, and the landing 'exciting' to say the least. Oh well, live and learn!

Hangie launching

Drove back up with Carl, Mihir, and Steve in my Honda, chilled out in cabin 2 for a bit with Uwe, Ron, and his girfriend, and went back to launch around 5. It was blowing pretty hard, and we saw Natalia way back east, seemingly unable to penetrate out. Even the hangies seemed parked when facing west, so we decided to not fly, although many did. At 6, it suddenly shut down, and seemed like all lift was gone as well. We headed back to the cabin, showered, fooled around on Ron's mandolin, and went for the BAPA dinner.

Excellent vegetarian biryani, burritos, and really excellent dal were the main course, for another memorable dinner. Chatted with Bob about his other life where he flies an airbus for United. Crashed early since hadn't slept much the previous night.

No flying on sunday for me as I had to be back home by 11am to attend yet another birthday party, the son of a close friend from Berkeley days. What is it about Dunlap and darned kids!

Here is a video shot by Mihir on sunday, when conditions were apparently mellower. Grrr!

Giggling in a gaggle of gliding grinning goons

April 26-27

BAPA Dunlap fly-in and cross-country co-op

Back to Dunlap for this weekend's fly-in with a cross-country (xc) intro thrown in. Thanks to Susan Kent, this fly-in was to have a no-stress intro to xc flying by there being a simple task (a course marked in the sky via GPS waypoints). Mihir and I decided to go on saturday morning with the usual drill of getting up at 4am and leaving the house by 5:15am. Arrived at the school parking lot at 9:15am and met up with the 30 or so folks who were turning up. After arranging for rides up, paying the registration fees, we headed up to launch. Unfortunately, I had been unable to get signed off for a P3 but Wally had given Susan a "verbal" about my flying skills. Whatever he said must have been ok since noone bothered me about it or tried to put additional restrictions!

The launch has been improved tremendously after last weekends work party. After the hang-glider ramp launch is fixed, 3-4 wings can layout in parallel at a time. The launch is really nice now.

Dunlap launch (4600 MSL)

We had a pilots meeting at 11am, led by Tom Moock and Susan. The task was a "simple" one; launch, go to a point to the left of launch before the ridge sort of "turns" back, come back past launch to a point to the right of launch before a big gap begins (i.e, the gap that leads to Delailah's lookout I think), and then head across the valley to an old turkey farm, and then goal at the school LZ. Ann and Kurt pointed out another official LZ between the farm and the school.

The 2 LZs and turkey farm as seen from launch

Gliders

People started launching around 11:20; I launched around 11:45 or so. Most of the lift was to the right of launch so that's where I headed too. This was my first experience with flying in a "gaggle" of multiple pilots. I would find 3-4 four pilots in a thermal and join them, and we would all circle, but at different speeds, banks, radii, and rates of ascent. I was certainly spooked by some "close" calls with other wings since we all seemed pretty close to each other. Of-course there are rules to follow like turning in the same direction as others, and giving right of way to lower gliders. At one point, I even got waked by another glider as he sped past; I could hear the turbulence hit my wing and cause it to jump around a bit. Mihir came so close at one point that I thought he was fooling around too much; I had to bank off to the left to avoid him. Later he would ask me why I was so close to him and not giving him right of way! He said he could very clearly see the bottom of my harness! Susan would also tell me later that I was being a bit aggressive and barging into thermals, whereas from my point of view it seemed like the other way! Anyway, it was a lot of fun although quite a bit of work to stay in these thermals today.

Me getting geared up (courtesy Wayne Clingingsmith)

People who got high, including me, topped out at 6000 feet. I could see a watery haze there and had clouds formed, it seemed that's where they would have formed. There was a particular trigger in front of Sequoia highlands (where we were staying for the night) that generated a great 1000 FPM that I could reliably ride up to 6k which I did several times. Even though the thermal would take me over the top of the mountain towards the back, there were no penetration issues today since the prevailing winds were quite mild. It was pretty wild to see the shadows of several wings circling on the ground. In one of these strong ones, I had a partial collapse since the noise of the wing fluttering was rather loud. But since it's an Arcus, it was brief and did nothing to scare me. The view to north, behind the launch from 600 feet is spectacular. Kings canyon national park is over there, and I could see a panoramic view of a beautiful snow-covered mountain range. Too bad it couldn't be photographed.

Gliders above launch

Gliders above launch (courtesy Mihir Lala)

However, I could never muster up desire to leave these lift areas and try to do the waypoints. Since there are no bailout LZs anywhere near launch, and since the school is a 4.5-1 glide away, I didn't want to sink out and have a shorter flight. My mental bailout altitude was 500 below launch, but I managed to stay above launch most of the time.

This was a "right hand" day, and near the ridge, everyone was supposed to turn to the right in thermals. A few that I found first I would turn to the left, but the majority were right-handed. This took a toll after an hour of almost constantly turning: my right hand became numb, cramped, and went to sleep. Given that I couldn't find time to take any video (with my brand new 1080P Aiptek) or photos since the flying required full concentration, I began to think of gliding across the valley. Besides, there was more than 400 fpm sink everwhere if you were not going up. So this really required a lot of work to constantly stay up, which was confirmed by everyone later.

Sunset glass-off (courtesy Mihir Lala or me)

The glide across the valley was mostly sink, although I did hit a few mellow 50-100fpm thermals that gained me a few hundred feet. I first headed towards the official LZ since that's slightly closer, and then corrected towards the school once I had a lot of altitude. I was probably at the school with 500-600 above so started my S-turns, fully thinking that if I hit a boomer, I would ride it back to the top, cramped arm or not. But no boomers, only weak little ones that would peter out quickly. I landed bang in the middle of the field very well. One hour and twenty minutes! Yeehaa, probably my longest thermal flight!

Mihir landed about 10 minutes later, as did most people.

(Courtesy Mihir Lala or me)

Went back up with Scott H. and then hung around in the A-frame cabin that Frank had rented and wanted to share with as many as possible. Went to the rec room and hung out there a bit, exchanging stories. At 5pm, walked back to launch to see if a glass-off was in the making. Initially it seemed unlikely, and the launch conditions were also a bit strong. However, slowly, almost everyone launched again, and a few who went back to the house thermals to the right found themselves in a semi-glass-off later. Both Mihir and I were tired, I had a headache, and the arm was still cramped and felt a bit lazy, although after seeing the glass off we really wished we had also flown. Perhaps it would have been a perfect time to take pictures since one could stay up without much effort. Oh well, another time! We sat around and took pictures, and I shot a few with Mihir's camera as well (hence the double credit for those!)

Gliders and hills (courtesy Mihir Lala or me)

A-frame cabin, Sequoia Highlands, right next to launch!

Went back to the cabin, took a shower, made the rice for dinner and went over to the rec room for the BAPA-sponsored dinner. Main entree was the vegetarian chili for me, along with appetizers like the hummus dip and salsa. Found that Paul had draped his glider over a tree in the evening, although he landed on the ground; this caused Kim and Andy to be late for the dinner since they helped Paul get it down, and more importantly, deprived us of the onions and cheese for the chili.

BAPA dinner (courtesy Wayne Clingingsmith)

Breakfast table

After a great "pilot's breakfast" in the morning (French toast, potatoes, pastries, OJ, coffee), and a bagged lunch, we headed off to launch, dropped off the gliders and drove the car down to the LZ. Just barely managed to find a ride back up (8 of us in Craig's SUV), and were up at launch by 10:30. Same drill as yesterday. I launched around 11:20 after a few misfires, but couldn't sit in my harness properly for what seemed like an eternity. When I was finally seated, found that my chest harness was pushed up and the radio antenna was in my face. Couldn't do anything about it since I was already 400 below launch. Scratched around a bit and finally hooked a strong one (but only 500-600 FPM) that took me back to launch, and then found another one that topped out at about 5300. Couldn't get higher than that today.

Got tired of doing the same thing as yesterday, and decided to try making that first waypoint. I think I did, but without a GPS, I can't really tell. On my way back, went over to a sunlit side of a spine and found a thermal there to take me back to about 5k. At this point I should have committed and come back to launch, worked the same spine as earlier, and made the second waypoint. But my arms were cramping up again, and that antenna in my face was getting on my nerves. So decided to gun it across the valley again, had a few saves over the LZ, but nothing spectacular.

On the way across tried some video but very frenzied and hectic since the sink alarm on the vario would keep going off. Came with plenty of altitude but got spooked on the final descent over the buildings and decided to just land in the school soccer field behind the baseball field this time. 35 minute flight, would have been nicer if the chest harness had been strapped in correctly. Mihir landed later, and he had an hour+ flight again. Mihir outflew me both days this time, but I'll get him next time!

Soccer field where I landed.

My cheese sandwich had almost turned into a grilled cheese sandwich since the cheese had melted in the hot car. Found that Paul, Ann and others were all landing in the hang-gliding LZ quite merrily, since they, being USHPA officers, have some privelege? The sods like us have to land in this far nastier LZ! Oh well, good practice.

After checking in with Susan, we headed back to the bay area and were home by 6pm.

Glider through tree (courtesy Mihir Lala or me)