Thermals

Some days the clouds pass in echelon, regular as a hearbeat.
Someplace upwind energy pools in the auricle,
a bundle of hiss waiting to signal a contraction.
Enough energy pools and the lifeblood bubble upwards,
leaving a void.

The energy pools in the auricle, ready to repeat.

Those who soar know this cycle.
The auricle might be a darker field, a rock, a stock pond.

The dome above fills and bubbles, fills and bubbles.

The time seems geologic compared to the time of the heart,
but the glider pilot holds his ear against his lover's chest,
waiting for the heart to beat again.

Shut up and Fly

Jimmy on the SPOT

The more soaring I do the less it seems like flying. Now that's nonsense, because while you are soaring you are definitely surrounded by air. I have the same feeling about ag flying, too: yes, there is an airplane, but the flying seems secondary to the mission. Maybe the way to look at it is to that flying is such a large part of my outlook on the world that I spend more time looking at how things are different than how things are similar.

Or think of it this way. A couple of years ago I went to the Soaring Society of America convention. This was one of those typical soaring productions, involving dozens of phone calls and emails and several weeks of deciding the best way for all of us to get from Salt Lake City to Albuquerque. We're all pilots, and some of us are power pilots, so there was a lot of comparing my club's Cherokee Six to Lew's Bonanza and Tim's Mooney as far as comfort, performance, and cost. The Mooney lost on comfort. (Keep in mind that I am a former Mooney owner, but a couple of the guys are pretty big and it's hard to fit big and Mooney into the same sentence.) And in the end the Bonanza and the Six lost out to Southwest's inexpensive 737, which is certified for flight into known icing.

We arrived separately, but we all left on the same flight. So here we are, 6 or so pilots filing onto an airplane. I know a bunch of Southwest pilots and believe me, they are pilots just like we are. (If you doubt me, watch the crew exchange in the jetway: you'll see lots of hands in the air illustrating the finer points of landing on 7R at Las Vegas when the wind is out of the south.) But what they do, at least when they are at work, seems to have nothing in common with what we do. (And, again, this is nonsense, since lots of airline pilots are glider pilots, like Dave English from hikoudo.com, or Lew with the Bonanza, and even I am getting ready to do some King Air instruction later this summer.)

So maybe flying is flying.

But something is different about soaring. I was reminded of this yesterday as Tim (of the Mooney) set out to fly 1000km in his Ventus, a high performance single seater. He had been watching the weather for a few days (and, yes, this involved dozens of phone calls and emails; we are like a bunch of old ladies) and it looked good.

He launched at about 0800 local time, a time more typical of a King Air than of a glider, but the forecast was for strong west winds which would mean lots of ridge lift. He set his SPOT to track mode, and as soon as the first track message got out there was a flurry of emails.


School is still in session for me, so I was stuck in the office or, at best at the coffee shop. I checked Tim's progress through the morning, noting that he made his planned turn near Salt Lake City and was headed north. I told people about the attempt, and of course many of them looked at me funny. But I was excited for him. And jealous, of course.

Headed out for lunch I checked his progress. But now there was something different: instead of a "track" message, his SPOT was sending a "help" message. He had landed out. (SPOT has two help messages, the "I'm OK but need help" kind and the "Call 911!" kind. Tim's was the former.)

Or so it appeared. I tried to call him, and got no answer: the advantage of SPOT is that it works where cell phones won't. So I left a message and sent a text "saw your help msg what do you need?" Sometimes an SMS message gets through even when cell coverage is too weak for voice.

The old lady glider pilots started to light up the phone and T1 lines with talk and email. I was physically closest to Tim but nowhere near his trailer, but I started to head his way just in case. But before I got to my car, Tim called. He had hiked to get cell phone coverage, and as soon as he got it there was my text.

What a world! There you are, alone in a single-seat aircraft, in a sparsely settled valley, in a plowed field, almost as alone as Apollo XI astronaut Michael Collins on the back side of the Moon while Neil and Buzz explored the surface. But no, that's not right: your friends know where you are and before you can even ask for help it is on the way!

But that's one way soaring is like flying. We go out of our way to help each other out. I've had airliners relay messages to Center for me, and I have relayed messages to airliners, including whole IFR clearances. That's another story; or is it? The FO was a friend, we recognized each other's voices, and they couldn't reach ATC, and the next thing I knew I was saying "ATC clears Skywest blah-blah-blah to the ..."

I could have saved him from copying the clearance if I had thought to send him a text.

Wet and not Wild

Here's a picture to ruin a glider pilot's weekend. It's instructive (and, at least for me, fun) to see why.

Ridge soaring in northern Utah depends on a west wind, but those bands of cirrus are coming from the east. According to the Rapid Update Cycle model sounding, the wind at the top of the ridge will be out of the northeast at about 10 knots. There will be no ridge soaring this weekend. Worse, the airport will be on the back side of the ridge, so a glider trying to get back from the ridge will be flying in sinking air. Yucko.

The east wind is too weak to produce wave lift.

The high cirrus means that the ground won't heat up enough to generate thermals.

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My soaring season began last week with four flights in the club Blanik. First came a tow to about 1700' above ground level, where I did some turns and stalls before entering the traffic pattern to land. No surprises. There was a little lift, which was encouraging, and while the surface wind was from the northwest and a little gusty, the wind above the airport was from the west.

Then came two quick patterns. I concentrated on pattern emergencies, which would mean either rope breaks or tow plane problems.

Now I was legal to carry passengers, so I moved into the back seat while a prospective club member got into the front. We took a high tow up to the ridge. The ridge was working weakly, and we flew the ridge for almost an hour. Then, as is often the case, all of a sudden there was no ridge lift to be found. The day had died.

We still had plenty of altitude, so we fooled around over the city, looking for sources of thermals from Wal-Mart (big heat generator) to the university (lots of hot air there) to the skating rink (which often generates a thermal, for no reason that we can discern). We had some periods of zero sink, but nothing worth circling in. There was one weak thermal right over the airport. We were down to around 900 feet, a little low for trying to circle in it; I tried it because any sink we found would only make us use a different runway. But there wasn't enough lift, so we landed.

We had flown more than an hour in weak conditions. I think it was a good introduction to soaring.

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But not today. Today there is a cabinet door hinge to replace, a sticky door knob to look at, and dinner to cook. Cirrus clouds above may kill the soaring, but things bode well for something on the grill.

Over Before It Started

People are getting excited about gliders again. I have been emailing and meeting with three prospective students. "When can we start flying?" they ask, filling me with empathetic eagerness. The club glider had some work done over the winter, and is almost ready for its annual. The towplanes (we may have two this year) are ready. Wahoo!

Yesterday we had the kind of transitional spring weather that can get you down if you don't know how to deal with it but get you excited if you recognize it for what it is. The Salt Lake area was sunny and warm, with light south winds, but flying into Idaho got us into an area of overcast and continuous light turbulence with strong up- and downdrafts. The power pilots were bummed out, but the glider email network was abuzz with "I think I saw a lennie" (that is, a lenticular cloud) and "I flew through a 15 knotter" (that is, a 1500fpm updraft). Someone posted a satellite photo showing mountain wave activity. But nobody actually rigged up and flew. Soon!

In fact, I had shown the same satellite photo to one of my power students, who is a wonderful student with the tiny fault that he is not interested in soaring.

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But it snowed all day today, and the peak gust in Pocatello was 48 knots. It snowed in Logan and along hte Wasatch Front. Needless to say there was no fun flying.

But soon!