February 16 in East-Central Indiana!

Who would have thought we could have a day like this? High winds, snow, ice, gray skies, low ceilings are often our lot this time of year, and we walk around with heads down avoiding the weather and dreaming of June soaring.

Today was different. Dr. Jack’s Blipmaps predictions and those of the sport aviation’s USAirNet indicated we would have light winds of 5 mph, a temperature/dewpoint spread of about 18 degrees, and a cloud base of about 5000ft. Well, it happened! We saw it coming and got ready.

A good lunch at Rachel’s fortified us for the cold, we opened the hangar doors at around 12:30. Tod Herrli, George , Ron , and Nyal got three one-hour flights with the help of Bob and 87Z. Tod flew with Nyal in the back seat yakking away, Ron and George went off for an hour (not sure who was flying, but most likely it was shared), and then Nyal flew with Ron in the back seat as backup and encouragement. It was c-o-o-o-ld!

Mind you, these flights were in a Blanik; N809S. The first flight reached 4900ft msl; we cut short to give others a chance. The second flight went out to stay an intended hour, and got back with 1:02, reporting that they had gone to Elwood and back, and the third flight repeated this tour and then made an excursion to the north to check the lift over the ethanol plant -- 1:07 flight time. We encountered lift at 1000ft up, and cloud streets everywhere! We stopped short to come down and warm up, but the lift was still going strong. There was at least four hours of good lift today; count ‘em --- f – o – u – r hours on February 16, in East-Central Indiana!

These Blaniks are perfectly capable X/C gliders on good days when the lift is dependable and enough time is available; we certainly flew silver distance in an hour’s time. It was out and back, but with the wind situation as it was, we could as easily have done it either east or west, upwind or downwind. Had we rigged glass ships and started earlier (the clouds were showing lift while we ate lunch), we could have done 100K, 200K, maybe even 300K today – if we had dressed warmly enough!

On that point, I have discovered that these dry chemical foot warmers are great for the toes. You should keep some around so you can fly more comfortably in the late fall, winter, and early spring. (It didn’t occur to me to use mine today.)

And come out to fly when there is a big dew point / high temperature spread with light winds.

Nyal