Feed Me Seymore, (Bad lines and the Devil that didn’t bite….)

(Mansfield Encampment 2015, July 19th)

Thought I should post something about “the other side” of flying our little piece of heaven on earth…. once in while the devil goes for walk. Its not all peaches and cream over the wheat fields of Washington State. There are days when the air simply gets mean rough and rowdy, the kind of day where respect is high on the priority list. July 19th was just such a day.

With Mia running the rig again, Mike and I started the day with clear skies, good visibility, very little smoke and a pretty good soaring forecast (that had a minor  7-10 mph south wind).  We started our flights at what was normally the traditional north setup area for a south tow. This year the spot had crops planted on both sides of the road we had not been able to use it up until just a few days prior (crops now cut it was ok to tow and safe for a aborted launch if we needed to pin off). 

Looking at the day suggested nothing major was in the works, pretty much “blue” over the tow site, some development to the west and a few Q’s starting to form over on the east side of Banks Lake. General plan for the day, try to strike out to the SE again but I suspected we were going to struggle heading that way but it was worth the try.

At 11:50 Mia gave me a nice 2000 ft tow, I pinned off straight into a nice smooth 300-400fpm up to 7000ft asl, good enough for me to start pressing south (my Flytec 6030 indicated 6-8 mph SE winds aloft). As I slowly picked south, Mia was “Speedy Gonzales” and within 20 min was back loading Mike.

This turned out to be our first bit of drama of the day. Mike was up on the rig getting ready to tow when a dust devil appeared in the cut wheat about 100 yards in front and to the west of the truck (moving parallel to the road…. toward the staging area). Mike captured the event on his GoPro ….

The risk of being seriously beat up by a dust devil on the truck is real. We do what we can to mitigate the risk but the odds are, sooner or later, your going to get hit.  We try to tow early, we try to setup in area that dust devils are not as common. Todays setup area tends to group the devil action over an old homestead nearby. For what ever reason, todays devil was like the plant from the movie “Little shop of horrors” and had “Feed me Seymore”  on its agenda and was looking for lean cut of “Mike” and a side order of “ATOS VR”

Fortunate for Mike it was not a direct hit! Passed very close to the right. Mike said he was afraid his right wing was going to snap off! Thankfully, Mia stayed cool (grabbed the rear wires and prevented the wing from being rocked back or snapping the nose line) and Mike got all of his weight into the glider, wrapped the cradle emergency straps around the base-tube. The outriggers on the tow rig stopped any fore/aft movement, stopped the rolling action of one wing being picked up and all was well… we would call this a near miss… except… the setup tarps took a direct hit! Soon, the tarps where being sucked up and heading XC north (small 2’ x 6’ vinyl layout sheets) …. Mia later, after Mike’s tow she managed to track them down nearly a mile away…. of course Mike’s tarp had to fly just a little further then mine.

So, while this drama was going on I soon found things where not going to be easy heading south east. In fact, while I was not real low I was starting to get the feeling that I better find something or the day was over. After a series of dashes NE to some big looking dust devils (and having very little success) I finally made a low save from 4200ft asl (meanwhile Mike was comfortably approaching 9000ft asl back near the start).

For me, connecting with this nasty bit of lift was a rough rodeo ride, still… going up was better then going down! After going for the big drift, I had climbed back up over 9000ft asl and was NE of Sims but happy just to be staying up.  

This would be the theme for most of the day, I would pull the crap lines and Mike (boy blunder… ooops, I mean Boy Wonder) would have divine intervention guide him along good lines for most of the day…. like when the dust devil steered around him on the truck?

We pretty much tossed out the idea of heading SE (I had drifted 15 km north before topping out at 9600 NE of Sims Corner and decided to head across Banks Lake  over Steamboat Rock State Park. Again, a rough nasty climb out of the Park to help get me over to East side.  By this point in time clouds had formed, seemingly based up around 12,000ft asl but I was finding it a real pain to figure out how to get there. The north leg was working but was by no means the glassy late day climbs I had a few days back. Near JW Butte I banged my heels off the keel… shortly after another weightless event! To quote a very good friend of ours (Luc) the “Fun meter is starting to run low”.

65kms from our Start, Mike who had taken a more southerly route was high over the Martin Canyon Turn point and I arrived way underneath him was flying  like a complete idiot seemingly incapable of finding anything solid… ouch.. I should not have said that!… I banged into a violent climb of 12-1400fpm… it was death grip and hang on time … back up to 11,500ft asl.  On a day like this you do start to ask yourself, do I seriously want to be here?…. of course you also have to ask yourself… do I really want to land in this?

Usually the best plan is to pick an different line and usually that’s the trick. Pushing SE toward Wilbur, things did improve. With Mike leading the way toward Wilson Creek, it was still “chunky” air, diminishing Q’s but there was much less turbulence then the north line, (Our flights, Mike in Red and I’m in Blue) For a brief time I started to catch up with Mike.

Since today theme for me was “Bad Lines”, After I had joined up with Mike, I tried to push south to the Wilson Creek turnpoint, Mike made the wise choice to turn for home. My little push set me up for a low snivelling grind back up to Hartline, where on at least two occasions Mia who was traveling north with me in the Jetta saved the day by spotting me at least two tiny dust devils that kept me up (now high overcast in the area was shutting things down). Finally just north west of Hartline, the God’s felt pity and gave me a save from 3900 back up 10,300ft asl for an easy glide across Banks Lake and back to goal.

Mikes 6 hour flight managed a 182km FAI OLC triangle with 200km flown to achieve the effort. My drunken 7 hour meanderings, even with the push to Wilson Creek yielded a 176 FAI OLC triangle with 212km’s flown… Mike slimed me with a little push NW to take the day… its a wonder he can sleep at night?

Again, nice to have Mia at goal with a windsock and some cold Beck’s beer (hmmmm starting to think Becks should be sponsoring us? ).

After such hard fought for flight it was nice to enjoy a few cool beverages and another spectacular sunset, Cheers from Mansfield: