After my Ascutney flight, I was mostly going to Morningside and Tanner-Hiller for aerotows, and I got one West Rutland sledder in between. Nothing to write home about. The only progress I made was - I stopped breaking weak links. All my flights, however, were just extended sledders at best. Until one weekend at Tanner-Hiller at the end of June....
I got off my first tow, boated around for a bit, got a few beeps from the vario here and there, and landed. While talking to Rhett after the flight, he mentioned that it was a good idea to start turning right away when he waved me off, and not to fiddle with harness and the tow bridle . I was all like "that sounds obvious, why didn't I think of it myself? Duh!". So I tried that on the next flight, and I went up right away! I gained 1000 feet in the first thermal where Rhett left me. That was awesome!
Go round and round
Then I found another thermal and got pretty close to the cloudbase.
Close to the clouds. Overlooking Quabbin reservoir.
I wasn't used to all that spinning though, and while it was fun - going up, fishing for another thermal, going up again - I started feeling a bit airsick. To recover, I went on a long glide to another side of the airfield.
On a glide
By the time I got there, I felt better, and decided to fish for another thermal. And I found one over the sandpit (you can see it in the photo above, to the right of the airstrip).
I played with it for another 15 minutes or so, and decided it was time to land.
I spent the rest of the day taking photos/videos and talking to other pilots. I got the taste of thermaling and got a good practice looking for thermals and staying in them. Great day!
One of the major sites that open up when you get H3 rating is Mount Ascutney, Vermont. It is one of the popular cross-country flying sites. Thus on a good flying day people are reluctant to deal with newbies. Site director, Jake, invented a rule to have a first flight off Ascutney to be early in the day. That means a sledder. And it needed to be observed by H4 that flown there before.
Saturday, June 7th, was looking really good as one of those cross-country flying days. People on MA hang gliding list where discussing forecast and who was going to fly... I sheepishly raised my virtual hand and asked if anyone would be willing to help this newbie. Tom Lanning excused himself saying he was still waiting for parts for his T2C glider. But Ilya Rivkin offered his help to show me LZs. Great!
Ilya and I were going to meet at Morningside and leave for Ascutney around 9:30am. While we were deciding on logistics, Tom showed up as well. Apparently he couldn't stay away when such great day was forecasted. His T2C was still not ready, but he had a Falcon. It's nice to have a spare glider.
Tom was happy to join us and help Ilya introducing me to the site. We loaded gliders on my truck and drove to LZs on the other side of Ascutney. Unfortunately, the shortest road to the LZ was closed and we had to detour on a few gravel roads. That added another 20 minutes of travel time.
To me it was all part of fun as Tom knows a lot about this site, flying in general, and always has a story or two to tell. The extra driving time wasn't boring.
Photo courtesy of Ilya Rivkin
After we checked all LZs and discussed possible flying patterns and approaches, we had to detour all the way back to the road that goes up the mountain through the state park. By the time we got there, it was almost noon and many pilots were already at the gate, minimizing number of vehicles they had to take up. Jake was there as well. He decided that it was too late for me to fly there. Later on, I learned another pilot had his first Ascutney flight the same day, and he actually soared. Oh well, not quite sure the point of that rule was anyway, but I didn't feel like arguing. I could always go and enjoy towing at Morningside.
Since the gliders were already on my truck, and I was going back anyway (no extra vehicle to retrieve later on), I drove Tom and Ilya all the way to the parking lot at the top of the mountain. Then I went back to Morningside for aerotowing.
I had a few flights at Morningside, and I discovered than my towing skills degraded. Now I was snapping weak links on almost every flight. Granted that was in midday, pretty turbulent, thermal conditions, but it never happened to me before, not at that rate anyway, and no one else was breaking weak links that day either. I snapped 2 links and then had 2 good flights.
In the evening, Tom and Amy treated me to dinner for all my troubles. There is always some silver lining!
What else? Oh yes, Ilya, in his brand new Sport2, had first cross-country flight that day. Congratulations, Ilya!
A week later, I snapped a weak link again, this time while towing with Rhett. He immediately told what I was doing wrong. I haven't snapped a weak-link since. What it was, when a plane would be bumped up by a thermal, I was correcting my position too fast, putting too much stress on the link. All I had to do was to make the transition slower and that fixed the problem. That was easy. Thanks Rhett!
Hike, Hike, Hike and Get Your Sledder
A couple of weeks after my first attempt, the conditions at Ascutney were looking pretty good for another try.
Saturday, Kevin Webb and I asked John Musto to help us out with our required sledder. He could do it only in the evening that day, and we hoped that condition would still be good around 5-6pm. Good for a sledder anyway. Another pilot joined our group as well. A visiting hang gliding instructor, working temporarily at Morningside (I forgot his name...).
John was super helpful and he even drove us there! We walked the main LZ again. And then drove to the launch site.
Hike from the parking lot at the top of the mountain to the launch site is ~0.5 miles. Walking with a 17' long bag on your shoulder is not an easy thing. Hiking on a mountain trail with this thing, is much worse. At least Falcon is somewhat light ~45-50 pounds.... plus a harness and a helmet, water and whatever equipment you take with you. It's a workout!
We made it there in about 20 minutes or so.
We set up our gliders and ...... the wind was crossing from the north and it was pretty gusty, too. After waiting for another hour, we decided to try tomorrow morning. Park was closing soon.
Windy evening at Ascutney (photo courtesy of Kevin Webb)
We put gliders behind the trees and left them there for the night. The other pilot that was with us had to work tomorrow morning, so he broke down his glider and we helped him to carry it back. Tomorrow was going to be another hike. At least this time only with my harness.
...
The next morning, we got to Ascutney as early as we could. Right after park opened. Hiking that trail without a glider on my shoulder was so much, much easier. I was hooked-in and ready to roll by 9:30AM. At launch, there was a slight breeze coming straight in at about 5mph. A few other pilots took a morning hike to enjoy the views. They helped on launch, and even took a video of me running down the rock. Camera on the wing of my glider got knocked out of whack while we were carrying the glider, so all I got was a "nice" video of my wing with not much else in the view.
Launch itself was pretty easy in such mild conditions. I set myself a goal to run all the way to the end of the rock (it's pretty steep), and I think I got that part down. The flight was short and uneventful, but I got a flavor of this site, and I hope to try again in soarable conditions. It should be fun. Big thanks to John Musto for helping us out with this task.
A week after I got my H3 rating, I got a text from Vitaly Pogrebnoy asking if I wanted to fly Mohawk Trail. The launch site is in North Adams, MA, right above Route 2 not far from hairpin. Vitaly has flown there a few times and he thought the forecast was good for Sunday.
Wind direction indeed looked good, but wind speed was on a lighter side. It didn't matter to me as I would gladly take a sledder just to fly at a new site.
Vitaly came to my house around 7am, we loaded my glider on his car and off we went. It's about 2 hours drive from my house, but we also wanted to check LZs. Another pilot, Rosan, would join us at the launch site.
All was going according to plan for 2-3PM launch. We checked different landing options, left one car in the bailout LZ right across the launch, and started setting up our gliders. Around 11am there were nice cumulus clouds forming above launch, indicating a possibility of thermal lift. By 1-2pm the sky was mostly clear above us with nice clouds across the valley. Not much use to us. Wind also was very weak, under 10 mph. It looked like a sledder day. Oh well.
I launched around 4pm. The launch was pretty easy in a very light wind. When in the air, there was not much going up close to the ridge. I was losing altitude right away. I made a few turns trying to sniff something out above route 2 to no avail.
Flying over Route 2
The bailout LZ is just 800 feet below launch, so there is not much time to do anything unless you find some lift right away. In 3 minutes I was in landing mode. I boxed the field and made a nice DBF approach landing in south direction. LZ windsock was just hanging down most of the time with slight gusts once in a while. I was landing precisely where I wanted to land. I got bumped by some thermal activity on final but corrected it and landed well. All that training was paying off.
Vitaly launched soon after me and didn't stay in the air for too long either. He landed with a nice flare.
I really liked the site, but one needed more than 10mph winds, or/and solid thermals to reliably fly there. Maybe next time...
