Saturday, 9/7/13 Flight Articles by: [Marty] [Ron Faoro] [David Teal]

Ron Faoro (The Spin Doctor)

Saturday, 9/7/13
Pine to Frazier and back to Lockwood Valley

Article copied from: http://scpa.info/bb/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2875#p8597

Adventures at Pine
Posted by Faoro_Ron » Sun Sep 08, 2013 5:15 am

We wait all year for Pine Mountain to turn on with the seasonal monsoonal patterns.  Often, there are impediments or conflicts with bringing it all together: Drivers, vehicles, wind and weather all have to fall into place.  In the past ten years a couple of big fires kept us out.  This year it was the construction of the amazing new blacktop road.  We waited patiently during this opening week with some nice glass-off flights.  Saturday turned out to be the the first day of classic, late summer Pine flying that we all hope for.

The blipmaps were predicting 15K tops; we couldn't pass up the opportunity, despite the fact that Marty, Tom Pipkin, Bob Hurlbett and I had no driver.  So we left Tom's car at the Sandpile and took Marty's to launch.  SoCal XC League had the good fortune of scheduling a meet there and had some chase.  Dave Teal kindly agreed to offer us potential chase with his driver, Fast Eddy.  We arrived at launch at 10:30; all the SoCal pilots were off by 11:15 and I was the last of the Topa pilots to leave with help from Chris Grantham and the SoCal crew at 11:45.

As Tom Pipkin says, the variables always produce a wide range of options and adventures - no two days are the same.  Today, Tom was unlucky.  After climbing to almost 12,000 feet after launching, he ended up dry in Dry Canyon over the back.  You never know.  Once he was in the same place setting up to land, caught a thermal, joined me in the Antelope Valley and ended up flying over 70 miles to Mojave.  We all got low in the Badlands, where you have to balance courage in finding thermals with terrible landing options.  Being last has its advantages.  I dove deeper over the Chute and back toward Guillermo with a twelve mph tailwind after hearing of the other pilots' struggles.  It didn't seem so smart as I sank out and turned back west, realizing I was going nowhere in the good landing spots direction.  Deep breath, got to find lift - it's part of the adventure.  I got a slow drifter that took me back up to 9,000 feet and I cruised over the 50-50.  The next set of thermals drew me up over Guillermo Mountain to the southeast.  They were all very light lift, 60-200 fpm, and I marveled at how mellow the day was.  I sailed into Lockwood Valley and spent 15 minutes or more in the ultimate slow cooker that lifted me up above 10K and I headed east under the developing big cumis.  Those guys changed the flavor of the day dramatically and my vario and I started hyperventilating.  I had to leave one big thermal at the end of the valley at 14,910 as it had cloud suck written all over it.  Cloudbase was right around 15K.  Marty was returning from the truck stop and I raced over Frazier Peak with a 42 mph groundspeed.  Bob had run out of luck earlier on the north side of Lockwood and I considered landing to keep him company as Tom had secured a ride hitch-hiking and was returning with his car.  The Antelope Valley is always enticing (the goal when flying our Mecca, Pine Mountain), but I didn't like the windspeed and the only big cumis were far away on the south side of the valley over the Liebre's.

So I turned around, joined by Marty, and a remarkable thing happened.  We were now going 31 mph westbound!  What interesting micro-meteorology - the convergence of two airmasses on this big air day.  I tried to avoid the lift as I looked for Bob on the road.  Now, here's what makes a good pilot and confirms Tom's saying about options and adventures.  It never crossed my mind to continue westbound.  Even tough I had crossed the Badlands twice on a previous occasion, I was cold and only thinking of landing as Tom neared Lockwood Valley in the car.  Marty made the right decision to continue his remarkable flight - partly for reasons of safety.  Lockwood was going off at 1:30 PM in the heat of the day!  There were giant dust devils everywhere, some a hundred yards or more across.  I was worried the whole time I descended and chose a huge field one quarter mile from Bob to put it down.  There are some high voltage wires along the south side of the road.  I didn't want to walk far in the 100 degree heat, but I sure wanted to give myself a couple of hundred feet clearance from those wires.  I set up to do some figure 8's at the west end of the field; Bob told me it was blowing east at 20 on the ground.  As soon as I was 500 feet AGL I started getting tossed in the strong thermic conditions.  I still could have easily climbed out to cloudbase and followed Marty.  Instead, on the last north leg of a figure 8 - when I was closest to the road and 50 feet off the ground turning south into the biggest part of the field - a big thermal blasted off in front of me.  I rocked back; it turned my wing sideways and I fought for control.  I fell out the back of the thermal, still turning without control and saw that I was now 20 feet higher than the power lines, sinking fast and headed straight toward them. I  was given one brief second to make my decision: Turn back away from the lines and possibly land right on top of them or get drawn in backwards into them (the draw was strong in that direction) or go straight and try to clear them.  Everything told me to ride it out.  Naturally, the bottom seemed to fall out as I got closer and my wing speed and time slowed to a crawl.  I may have let out a disconcerted comment.  I lifted my legs and the bottom of my fat harness cleared the white insulator holding those big wires by less than six inches.  I thumped into the dirt on the other side of the road at full speed. I sat there for a moment - kind of shook up - pondering the fine line between flying and frying.  An adventure and a lesson.  Don't land in Lockwood in the heat of the day.

Tom picked us up.  We got Marty's car from launch, drove back to Ojai and had beer and hamburgers while we watched all the glass-off pilots float into town from Pine at 5:30 to 6:00 PM.

Two hour flight. Home with Bob by 7:00 PM. Thanks for buying me dinner, Marty!

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