All the time since my flight from Ascutney, I wanted to do a cross-country flight. Many hang glider and paraglider pilots fly x-country regularly, and they all rave about the experience. I was definitely getting inspired to cut the cord, to leave the fishbowl.
New pilots were joining the x-country ranks as well, like Ilya Rivkin with his recent 2 flights. I couldn't help it anymore, I needed to fly somewhere. It didn't matter why or where. Just needed a good day to get me high into the sky.
Last Sunday at Tanner-Hiller was that day. I got to the airport around 11am and I couldn't believe how great the sky looked. It was a gold mine. And many people came out to play. I don't think I have ever seen so many pilots at Tanner-Hiller.
I spent some time replacing a downtube on my glider that I have broken a day before at Burke, and I was ready to launch around 1:30PM. But the line to be towed up was pretty long. With only one tug towing, it took me more than an hour to get my glider on a cart and ready to roll.
All Lined Up
Nick was helping on launch and made the process as efficient as possible.
Nick assisting on launch
The tow was pretty uneventful. Normal thermal bumps here and there, but nothing crazy.
Takeoff
In a few minutes I released from the plane. Rhett left me in a nice thermal and I was going up 300' per minute.
Release
It took some time to get high enough to consider leaving some place. I lost a couple of thermals and found other ones, sometimes getting 600 ft/min up, sometimes getting into sink.
Climbing Up!
Climbing up with other pilots around me, made it even more fun experience.
Sharing the Sky. Lift is everywhere!
Finally, I reached 5500' MSL and was probably another 500' from the cloudbase. I decided I had enough altitude to go on a glide with no return. I picked a cloud I liked in the distance, and went for it. Obviously, I didn't picked either a good direction or good cloud, but I was too overwhelmed with the whole thing.... Gotta start somewhere, though. The one thing I was paying attention to was possible fields to land in. I saw some options in the distance I could probably use.
Leaving for another cloud.
My glide wasn't long. Falcon doesn't have a great glide to begin with, and I grossly underestimated how far those clouds were. Very soon I was at approximately 1000' above ground and started picking up landing zones. Some of the options I saw in the distance were unusable. Swamps or something like that. But there were a few field I flew over, so I turned around and went back to those. Huge hay fields. Recently mowed. Couldn't be better.
Hay field - my LZ of the day
On the ground
The landing was pretty good, except I flared a bit too soon. I held the flare and parachuted back to the ground. Then moved the glider to a tree line. A friendly guy from a nearby house came out to greet me. I apologized for landing on his land. He told me, the field wasn't his, but his neighbor's and they probably didn't care either. The guy was just impressed with my landing and wanted to chat. He even offered to relaunch me - "Hey, I've got a truck and a small hill. Can you launch from there?". I thanked him, but declined... He didn't offer to drive me back to the airport though. That would be much more useful.
I called Rhett and asked if he could find someone willing to fetch me. Bob Burchard, manager at Tanner-Hiller, volunteered to bring my truck down. I started packing my glider, and then waited another 40 minutes for my ride to arrive. I only flew 3.5 miles in a straight line, but I took 30 minutes of drive time to get there. Big thanks to Bob for helping me!
I was considering different options for a weekend - looking at Mohawk Trail, or maybe towing. Trail didn't look promising - too light and too cross from the north. North direction could be great for Burke Mountain in Vermont. Jon Atwood, president of MA hang gliding/paragliding club, posted that he was going to Burke, and I wanted to join him. A new site to fly!
Jon stopped by my house around 7am. We loaded my glider on Jon's truck and got on the road. No one else expressed interest going to Burke, so it was only two of us. A few paraglider pilots were going to join us there. Jon flies both wings - hang gliders and paragliders.
Drive to Burke is pretty easy (I-495 to I-93, and I-93 almost all the way there), but it is long - 3 hours. Carpooling definitely helps to save gas, and to make trip more fun.
When we got there, Burke site director, AJ, gave us an intro. We walked the LZ (you can see a video of LZ below). The LZ was going to be a challenge for sure. It was on a slope, with prevailing winds blowing uphill. Since landing downhill is never a good idea, the landing would have to be either crosswind or downwind/uphill. On a falcon, I could have tried to land crosswind, but there were a few obstacles - like a wooden walkway, and uneven ground. The best way would be not to land there at all. Get some altitude, and land elsewhere... if I could get enough altitude.
The launch is located between two ski lifts. It is a short, but a rather steep walk from the road. When we got to the launch, clouds above us were massive, indicating some serious thermal activity. Probably not something we wanted to launch in. Wind was pretty strong, too. So we decided to wait. I definitely wasn't going to risk it with rough conditions at unfamiliar site.
Around 3pm winds started to get manageable, but I still felt it was a bit strong for a Falcon. Another pilot (Art, I think) on a Sport 2, launched around 3:30pm. He went straight up. We could see him parking his glider above our heads. He could penetrate upwind, if he wanted to, but it felt a bit too much for me.
After 4pm winds started to get pretty light and I decided to launch. I didn't get any surprises on launch. All went really well. But I immediately discovered that I picked a wrong time to launch. I had a blue hole (no clouds) above me. No thermal lift, and ridge lift was pretty light. I managed to stay afloat for 15 minutes but very soon sank below the launch and had to head out to land. So that nasty LZ was my destination now.
I didn't want to deal with uneven ground and obstacles, so I decided to try downwind/uphill landing. All was going OK until I decided to flare.... apparently there was a somewhat flat spot on that slope and my flare happened right there. Glider got pushed forward, I went through the frame with enough force to completely break one of the downtubes. I would be in a better shape if I didn't flare at all. Dammit!
Jon landed his Falcon soon after me. He probably could have flown longer, but he wanted to fly his paraglider that day as well. Jon chose to land crosswind (you can see his landing in the video) and it worked great. No dropped gliders, no broken downtubes.
Jon is landing his Falcon
To add insult to injury, all paragliders that launched 30 minutes after me, went all the way to the cloudbase - 6000 feet MSL. The blue hole I launched into disappeared, and a nice set of cummies came along providing everyone with a nice evening lift to the top. Oh well...
...
Overall, not a bad day, though. I got a chance to fly a new site, got to experience a different kind of landing zone. It was all good. Thanks to Jon for taking me there!
Will I go to Burke again? Sure, if conditions are right, I might. But it would be rather low on my priority list. Somehow, I wasn't particularly fond of that site, and not only because I broke a downtube there. Long drive, challenging LZ (if you don't go up), awkward launch site, small ridge... I think, for me, there are better places to fly. If I lived not too far from Burke - it would be a pretty good site, though.
