Last weekend we (Marlys my wife, son Derek & me)headed to Colorado for a property owners meeting and decided to extend our visit to take in the happenings at Telluride. I have been to the Telluride event three times over the years, so I was looking forward to it.
When I have previously driven out (from Omaha & Minneapolis) a couple of stops along the way to try and get a flight were always planned. One of those sites along the way has been Willow, near Gunnison. I had exchanged email with a number of pilots on the status of Willow before going out and even talked with David Inouye, once I was there. Actually, talking to someone cost me my calander and address book which I conveniently left at a phone booth in Gunnison. As always happens when you are trying to get a flight when "just passing through", you will be at afternoon/evening sites in the morning and morning sites in the evening. Willow is a afternoon/evening, site as it faces west-northwest (according to my exacting internal compass).
Last time I was at Willow in 1990, we drove up in a Ford Conversion Van with three hang gliders, pilots and gear in it. Although the road was pretty nice there was a stretch at the top that was steep enough to put the Prairie Princess to the test. You know what I am talking about, foot trying to push through the firewall and waning confidence in the sound of the mighty steeds under the hood..aaaah in the doghouse by my knee. So this time with a rented Sable, I was...looking forward to the drive up. David had mentioned that a lot of work had been done on the road this year, and he was right, this was a nice drive up, not a common thing in the west or flying sites in general. I usually rely on the look on my wife's face as to the condition of the road, since she will be the one driving down (the hardest direction), her level of scrutiny makes mine appear bush league.
Did I mention, this is a afternoon/evening site. So according to the previous rule we arrived at launch about 10:30 Sunday MORNING. As expected there was no one around and the wind was dribbling over the back (east) with a switch to 90 degrees cross (north) every couple of minutes. The sky above was severe clear, but to the north the cumi's had started to tower and to the southwest over the San Juan's (?) it looked ominous. This seems to have been the rule during our three trips to Colorado this summer, monsoonal flow from the south leading to big cum-nims, virga, gust fronts, get an early flight or none at all.
Believe it or not, I went into hang waiting mode. Why? I had got one of those sure signs that has served me well over the years when doing pre-flight condition assessment.
I really had to find a bush and some mountain money baaaad.
When my wife saw me digging through my harness and smiling when I was rewarded with a quarter roll of toilet paper, she got out a book and sat down to read, she this before, no not that. This is a sure sign shared my many pilots as attested to by the number looking for tp at launch.
Once the pressure had been relieved and I was comfortable with ...aah, my decision. I moved to the launch area south of the windsocks and started the doing the wind dance...you know what I mean, walking around and kicking the dirt to raise a little dust. The wind according to the reservoir wind lines looked to be light out of the west. And no kidding, after about 5 minutes I was blessed with a fart in the face. It was going to turn. The critical thing was how soon would it turn and how soon would it howl. Did I mention that last time I was here it was blowing about 40 mph. The lake said good, although the conditions to the north and south were building. The lake my have been a bit of a buffer for this area.
I got another cycle straight in lasting about 5 minutes and topping at about 7 mph. I knew this because that's the point at which I begin to hear the wind going by my ears. Stick your head out the window of your car sometime and calibrate your cranial cavities yourself. You'll get some strange looks around the neighborhood, but it will be worth it in the long run.
NOTE: Children, this is a joke! Don't try this at home..or anywhere else. Just stand at launches for about 20 years and sooner or later you begin to notice something's. BTW, this is as close as I am going to get to the lia------ and wai--- issue (Luke, beware of the dark side.).
I try to be wing agnostic in my postings, but no I did not have a HG roped to the top of the Saab, I had a bag in the back. So I got out my stuff and loaded up the ballast bag with most of the water we had on hand. Geez, I hope my FAMILY doesn't have any problems getting down the hill and picking ME up.
Marlys, seeing that I was getting serious, walked over, with out closing her book. Did I mention she been there, done that before, and asked what the plan was? Going through my normal in-depth pre-flight briefing, I said aah...stay around to see if I get up. I may land on top or I may go someplace or you see that pond down there by the reservoir, I may land there. To which her response is always, so... do I have a radio? This last remark is traditionally accompanied by "The Look" (Thanks to Joe "the Mayor" Soucheray). You guys who have received "The Look" know exactly what I am talking about, and probably the date, time and place, you first got it. Those of you who haven't, rest assured your day is coming. Sorry, this is a guy thing, I have never seen a woman receive "The Look" from a guy. Or a guy even attempt to give it...they would only look foolish and make children cry, so don't bother.
So, I spread out my PG, suited-up, got into my lead-ass harness (Ya, I know I already said I was using water for ballast, but water-ass sounds like a proctological condition.), and hooked in to the wing. The cycles were now straight-in and sustained, topping at about 10 mph. I was time to get off this mountain. I inflated and kited for a minute or so, to get a feel for the air. I noticed Marlys, still reading her book looking up every so often to see if I was gone yet or not. The wing started to get the thermal suck feeling (Yes, I believe PGs get ramp suck.), so I turned and punched off.
Nice air. Wing felt good, not like it was verging on going rag. I moved out front a little and was rewarded with a some stuff moving up. The lift was semi-interesting in its texture, but it never spanked me. I had some fun playing along the spine to the north of launch, never quite sure if what I was getting was coming off the west side(wind direction, I think) or the east side (sun/thermal side).
So, after my ration of flying fun, I worked out to the pond by the reservoir, I was heading for the west side of the pond, which had been the LZ back in 1990, and anyway there was nice green grass on the shore there.
I was about 300' over, when the blue and white squad car pulled up on the east side of the pond. So, I ask myself is this a sign to land by the squad OR not to OR did he just pull up to see if I was going to lawn dart. Screw it, I landed on the grass on the west side of the pond, took off my helmet, balled up the wing looked over at him and gave him my biggest "how do" wave, which he promptly returned out his side window, backed-up and drove away. I packed up and headed for Telluride.
By the time we hit Montrose, we could see that the Sneffels was cloud capped and the Telluride canyon looked socked in with dark..really dark cu-nims. On the way in we saw quite a few cars with gliders heading the other way, I guess some pilots had to get to work on Monday (the eternal optimist). Even passed "The Green Leader", another Minnesota pilot, heading for home the and that as I understand it is a story in itself. We didn't hear any chatter on the radio and the tops of the mountains were cloud covered with mountain smoke in the valleys between the ridge spines. Not good indicators that fly'en be happin'n.
There were still quite a few glider equipped cars around town, but it had more the feeling of a Deadheads convention then a hang glider event. This was cleared up when we noticed that the Airmen's Rendezvous was sharing time with the Telluride Mushroom Festival. These people must be nuts digging-up and eating that stuff...heck you could get hurt or even die from it....oops.
The evening round of the Telluride Speed Gliding Contest was scheduled for 7pm. The finish gate was situated in the Leisure LZ (Oops Field). We had been up the mountain during the afternoon (via the Telluride Mass Transit System - The new Gondola) and decided the best place to watch would be at the finish line.
I watched this on TV last year when it had been in Aspen. It really did not give me a good feeling for the type and format of the competition. So with that in mind we got to the Leisure LZ at 6pm anticipating parking and viewing problems. Stupid me, this is hang gliding, which when it is happening around people at all, doesn't seem to raise much interest, even here in Minnesota, where you can land beside a road and no one even stops to see what's going on. I believe that the media, special effects, Bill Clinton, aliens, etc. has made for a very jaded, over stimulated and bored society. Sorry, let me put away my soapbox.
The evenings round was scheduled for 7pm, according to the circulars around town, so promptly at 6:15pm the competitors started launching. Pilots have always had different scales for time (I was up for 3 hours), distance (I went 100 miles) and size (that was a 15 hun up...just ask their wives), But I think the early start was due to conditions.
I don't know all the details about the format, but it appears that a pilot would launch and when they passed a start gate a time was recorded and radioed to the finish gate. Pilots were also penalized or disqualified for missing gates. Many pilots in the rounds I observed were getting DQ'd due to missed gates. This could refocus the event from one of true speed gliding to something more a tune to GS race in skiing. All of this meant that more then one pilot could be on course at one time, and in fact they were. This provided some of the more exciting HG flying I have seen.
I am not going to mention glider brands or pilots names, but the first two pilots set up the kind of race I had been looking forward to since the advent of the topless gliders. Here was a top of the line kingposted glider launching first, followed by a topless wing. The pilots were a push, in that they were both highly experienced. By the time the last gate before the finish line was reached, the topless had caught the kingpost. As they went on final the topless pilot could be heard yelling "coming through" as he passed the kingposted glider and screamed across the finish line.
Over the course of the next 45 minutes, I noticed that topless wings were going into their high speed glide sooner then their kingposted brethren, and that they seemed to carry more energy through the gate. Most pilots were passing through the gate at 1-3 feet agl and the topless wing would fly clear across the LZ before slowing down to flare speed, while the kingposted wings would dissipate there speed and land anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 the way across.
This is purely observational and not ment to be a scientific or exhaustive study of the performance of topless gliders vs. kingposted wings. IMHO at real world flight speeds the difference is probably marginal at most. But in this type of format (speed gliding), topless wings appear to have an advantage.
A couple of other obs. It use to be that a hang glider LZ could be the source of much entertainment watching pilots attempt, I mean attempt to bring their birds back to earth. The Telluride LZs were especially good because of altitude, high percentage of bladewings and the brain cell burn off of pilots suffering from hypoxia. The Sunday night edition of LZ show can be summed up in one word....boring. Everyone had great flares and landings. Heck I couldn't even whisper whack. What has happened to the good old days of bent aluminum, wings that had minuscule flare windows and even then it was at about 25 mph. Then to add insult to injury, the next morning at the 7am practice round, landing with a tailwind, they all still managed to pull of great landings, even the pilot who flared so hard that he stuck his keel into the dirt snapping it behind the rear wires.
The ability of a topless wing to loop was also confirmed (to me), when one pilot was disqualified for missing a gate early on the course and chose to leave the course and put on a aero show over the LZ. Thank you.
We could only stay for a day, because we too had to get back to the Cities and put our noses back on the grindstone. So after a day in Telluride we drove to Denver, to get a flight back. You know, like HG/PG pilots, airline company clocks are different from the rest of the worlds too, according to them they are always on time.
