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Saturday, 11/8/2014 [Flight Articles] by [Neal] [Jonathan] [Sundowner] [John Scott] & [Tim Barker]
[Weather Archive & Percepton] [Google Earth Track Log Index for All] [All Posted Photos]

Chiefs Peak Launch (Ojai) to Cold Springs School (Montecito / Santa Barbara)
Tandem with Peter Richner
28.4 miles from launch to landing
2 hours 16 minutes airtime, Launch at 11:25:22 AM PST, Land at 1:41:03 PM PST
Bantoo

Sundowner's Flight Report
See Also: Tom's [Weather Perception] [Google Earth KMZ Track File file], [IGC Text Data], and [Photo Set from All Pilots]
Tom's IGC Track Log reading 24 feet high on launch, and 143 feet high on landing

The weather pattern was changing slowly, so we were able to post a meet for Saturday by midday Thursday.  Only 5 weeks left before our USFS locks the gates to Nordhoff Ridge Road and Pine Mountain.  Got a reasonable turnout.  2 trucks with 13 people composed of 4 HGs, 6 1/2 PGs, plus crew (13 people total).  The HGs in Max's truck were; Max Hogan, John Scott (aka South Side), Todd Quayle (aka TQ), Jonathan Dietch (aka NMERider / JD), with Edward Skow for crew.  The PGs in the Fly Above All Suburban were: Chris Grantham, Robin Cushman, Ron from Oregon, Bob Hurlbett, Neal Michaelis (aka flychild), Peter Richner with Tom Truax (aka Sundowner / SD) flying Tandem, plus John Kloer (aka OJ) providing crew support.

Both trucks departed Nordhoff High School by 8:50 AM.  Comfortable ride up with a stop at the ridge line to gage the strength of the early morning NE wind over the back.  It was cycling up light at Chiefs Launch, but we were a bit early.  Neal was first off at a 10:46 (PST).  He made it look easy, climbing slow but steady up to about 6K, which prompted everyone else to suit up and go.  I didn't want to be the wind dummy because we were loaded a tad heavy on the tandem for the early morning light conditions.  Unfortunately, Chiefs is somewhat of a single file launch and the tandem is a real-estate hog, so we waited till the end and were off 39 minutes after Neal at 11:25.  Averaged about 1 launch every 4 minutes (39/10).

Most of the PG pilots were already gone by the time we started climbing out.  The HGs were getting high but lagging behind the front PG pilots.  Peter and I launched shortly after Bob Hurlbett and John Scott, so Bob and I shared the same thermals over the top the spine while the HGs were fishing higher up behind Chiefs Peak.

Pretty uneventful day with adequate lift and altitude to make mostly downwind connections between launch and the west side of Casitas Pass.  It takes more altitude to cross Casitas Pass westbound than it does eastbound.  Our 5900 at White Ledge was enough, but we still had to connect the dots.  Neal took the back ridge, but Peter and I cut across the canyon from White Ledge to East Divide Spine because we went through the saddle behind White Ledge and had to get up on the SW spine.  The drift at altitude was light from the east so we had the connection made if we went direct, whereas Neal got up behind the saddle and took the back ridge route.  I usually take the back ridge route also, but since we ended up out front a bit it made more sense to cut across and I didn't expect much ridge lift in the light conditions.

Neal was pretty helpful.  Seemed like a sports car running circles around us.  He come back several times, I think just to keep us company and map the lift for us.  We got in front once or twice, but he could zoom past us at will.  In the end, we didn't have the sink rate to transition up from the East Spine of Montecito over to the Peak.  Neal got to 44 and we limped over to the west spine after only getting into the upper 2s on the east spine.  We just needed one more thermal to reach for East Beach, but our first day of Standard Time (falling back from Daylight Savings Time) was fading fast and early even though it was only 1:30ish.  Got to the west spine of Montecito on the lower end of the connectable variance, but our limited fishing troll resulted in a net loss.  We gave Parkers a quick cast, but that was wishful thinking as we dropped into cooler air down low.

Seemed like we had very light drift from the west on our glide out.  Opted for Cold Springs School rather than the various fields at Westmont College.  I've landed there a half a dozen times in my HG, so perhaps I was a bit overconfident.  Overflew the field along the eastern tree line to review the scenario and got out of position for my usual approach, which incorporates a downwind leg from the WNW to a variable radius mushing turn dropping through the low gap in the trees on the NE corner, then letting the wing pitch down to build speed on a diagonal final across the field toward the SW.  Rather than executing an approach with adjustability, were forced to do altitude loosing figure 8s in front of the tall eucalyptus trees.  It turned out to be light downwind approaching from east to west, and the heavy tandem is sluggish when doing reversing figure 8s in the mush mode.  Concerned about overshooting, we did one more zig zag with the glider in mush mode.  Tried to build energy coming out of the last turn but got to the ground before we could round out the bottom of our pendulum.  Still had significant vertical velocity and quite a bit of forward speed on contact.  The canopy continued forward and whacked the ground pretty hard, but the grass was soft and clean.

Peter was a great student passenger.  We were loaded a tad heavy early and late in the day, but on a more robust outing our heavy loading should serve us well.  I look forward to flying with him again.  He's pretty robust so our harder than preferable touchdown didn't seem to faze him, and he seemed to be soaking up the overload of information pretty well.

It was hot on the ground, so I changed into shorts.   A tourist took some photos of our approach and landing and was going to email them to me, but...?  He phoned us a bit later to say he saw Neal landing at Parma.  We thought Neal would have gone further west, or to the Beach, but he spent his altitude searching for lift at the RnR and got too low to reach the beach.

Bob had landed in Ojai (near the Diversion Dam?) so he got to Peter's truck at Nordhoff High School and collected us at Cold Springs.  We could have thumbed into Coast Village, but it was more relaxing to lounge in the shade away from the noise of Foothill Road.  We did lunch at one of the sandwich shops by Padaro Beach.  Bob's car was at my house.  He had carpooled from SB with Neal, but Neal's wife picked him up at Parma.  Neal rarely lands at Parma, so it's fitting that he should end up there on his first westbound flight from Ojai.

The HGs all lived further south so they didn't want to stop for lunch despite similar timing due to their drive up to East Beach to collect Jonathan.

Special Thanks to both Edward and OJ for their contributions that enable the logistics to work.

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