vontresc
En-Route
I had my longest XC glider flight to date on Monday, and if it hadn't been for the lack of a "relief" system I probably could have done all three of my Silver Badge legs in one flight.
The weather was simply awesome for the entire weekend, and Dr Jack was predicting strong thermals, and pretty good bases (by WI standards at lest), so I decided to declare a silver distance task in my logger and go for it. I ended up declaring a task from Hartford (HXF) to West Bend (ETB) to Sullivan (31WI) with the West Bent to Sullivan leg exceeding the 50km silver distance requirement.
The day started off pretty good. I got off of tow at 1500' agl, and quickly climbed up to 3100' agl. I was noth of the airport, so I needed to go south to start my task. Unfortunately before I knew it i was down to 1000' agl looking for lift on downwind
. Thankfully I didn't need a relight, and managed to get near cloudbase which was near 5000' Msl already just around noon.
I pressed on to my first turn point, and then turned towards my next goal 60 km away. It felt awesome to actually try to go somewhere, and actually make it. Before I knew it I was getting close to my endpoint at Hartford, so I decided to push the nose over, and speed up my final glide.
I was just miles away from the airport gloing pretty quickly when I hit a 300 fpm thermal going close to 70kts. I immeadiately pulled into the thermal, and racked it over at 60-70 deg bank. I had cored a boomerand was shooting up at 7-900 fpm. What a ride!
This was just a little over 3 hours into the flight, and I thought with this weather I could probably stay up the 5 hours required for silver duration. Sadly my bladder had different plans. I landed after 4 hours and 5 minutes, pried myself out of the cockpit, and sprinted to the nearest bush.
So now I have 2/3 of my silver Badge completed, and I had a great time doing so.
Here is my GPS trace of the flight.
http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?flightId=-1752561682
Unfortunetely I did not take any photos
The weather was simply awesome for the entire weekend, and Dr Jack was predicting strong thermals, and pretty good bases (by WI standards at lest), so I decided to declare a silver distance task in my logger and go for it. I ended up declaring a task from Hartford (HXF) to West Bend (ETB) to Sullivan (31WI) with the West Bent to Sullivan leg exceeding the 50km silver distance requirement.
The day started off pretty good. I got off of tow at 1500' agl, and quickly climbed up to 3100' agl. I was noth of the airport, so I needed to go south to start my task. Unfortunately before I knew it i was down to 1000' agl looking for lift on downwind
. Thankfully I didn't need a relight, and managed to get near cloudbase which was near 5000' Msl already just around noon. I pressed on to my first turn point, and then turned towards my next goal 60 km away. It felt awesome to actually try to go somewhere, and actually make it. Before I knew it I was getting close to my endpoint at Hartford, so I decided to push the nose over, and speed up my final glide.
I was just miles away from the airport gloing pretty quickly when I hit a 300 fpm thermal going close to 70kts. I immeadiately pulled into the thermal, and racked it over at 60-70 deg bank. I had cored a boomerand was shooting up at 7-900 fpm. What a ride!
This was just a little over 3 hours into the flight, and I thought with this weather I could probably stay up the 5 hours required for silver duration. Sadly my bladder had different plans. I landed after 4 hours and 5 minutes, pried myself out of the cockpit, and sprinted to the nearest bush
.So now I have 2/3 of my silver Badge completed, and I had a great time doing so.
Here is my GPS trace of the flight.
http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?flightId=-1752561682
Unfortunetely I did not take any photos
