What a Wonderful Day

I woke up at 5:30 am, went out for breakfast with my wife, Diana, and then drove to the Sugarbush Airport. I was invited to observe the Sugarbush Soaring Association Board of Directors meeting, which I did. This was pretty interesting and lasted about 1 1/2 hours. Then, Jeff Banks, a new pilot friend and I along with three or four other Club members disassembled two of the Club's Schweitzer 2-33 training gliders. I'd never done that before. It amounted to taking off the wings, wing struts and horizontal stabilizer.

Then a lot of hanging around; watching the many take-offs and landings taking place continuously all day. I helped with that activity; moving gliders into take-off position, hooking up the tow ropes to the glider and the towplane, assisting to level off the wings, etc.

Jeff asked me if I wanted to go for a ride in one of the two seat fiberglass gliders. I exclaimed, "yes!" It was a pretty windy day, twenty to thirty knots at times. That's why I wasn't taking a training plane by myself. But some pilots were reportedly going up to 15,000 feet. All wave soaring. We got the ASK-21 into position, got in and away we went!

My new friend and pilot in command, Jeff, is a DC-10 pilot and flies back and forth across the Atlantic. He talked, telling me what was happening during the one hour flight. The tow was by far the roughest I had ever experienced and Jeff handled it beautifully and kept on talking the whole time. He showed me how to yaw the glider the instant the rope went slack (it did several times) in order to minimize the impact tug on the glider when the rope became tight again and many other tips. When Jeff released at 2,500 feet over the field we were already in the wave. We continued up in 200-400 feet per minute (fpm) smooth lift; all the way to 11,100 feet msl. Wow, what a great ride up to this GREAT VIEW of Vermont.

Jeff let me take over the controls several times and even showed my, then had me, do slow and abrupt stalls. The ship was very slippery compared to the ships I was used to, made little noise at high speed, the stick was very "positive" feeling and immediately responsive. Jeff flew us to various areas of the wave showing me where the lift gets weak in the front area and how to turn 90 degrees to the wind briefly to drift back to the stronger lift.

Jeff also demonstrated some enormous lazy-eights. 120 knots airspeed, then... down to 38 knots, then ... repeat it ... Jeff indicated we began entering into a spin in one of them, but I was actually somewhat overwhelmed by it all and didn't (couldn't) really notice. I elected not to try them at this time. We flew northerly nearly to Camel's Hump, all the time about a mile downwind of the ridge.

Then came another fun part. Jeff showed me how to fly downwind to the secondary wave. We flew easterly, ending up over the Roxbury Range, over Moretown Gap, still at 8,000 - 9,000 feet msl. For the three to four minutes it took to cross the valley, we maintained 120 to 125 knots of airspeed. We were in over 1,000 fpm sink. The variometer was pegged down at -1,000 fpm. When it eased up, we slowed down to 42 knots again and were in 100 fpm up air; the secondary wave.

Next we recrossed the valley back to the primary wave again (at 120 knots on the entire rapid crossing) where we rejoined six or seven other sailplanes. We were now down to about 6,000 feet msl. Still great flying and a great view. We played around here for awhile, back in 200 fpm completely smooth lift. At the high segment of our flight, we could see most all of Lake Champlain, even Lake George to the southwest, the Plattsburg Air Force Base, the Stowe-Morrisville airport, the Worcester mountain range, the Montpelier-Barre airport, Montpelier and my house right near it, Pico and Killington ski areas, Rick Hale's house and lot's more...

Our hour was about up, so Jeff indicated we had better bring her home. Jeff did a spectacular job of piloting down through the wave. It was by far the roughest of the flying machine air I had ever been in. We took some strong hits, I thought. We began our descent maintaining about 125 knots air speed. This kept up for awhile losing altitude all the time in smooth air. Suddenly, we began to pick up hints of turbulence. Right away Jeff said, "Better bring it down to maneuvering speed," and immediately leveled off some to reduce our speed. It was nice to have tight restraining belts! Jeff kept the glider in a steep bank much of the time. I could also see the "Orange Carrot" about 1,500 feet below us, going through the same trash that we were, I assume.

Soon we were in the pattern...on final...on the roll-out...it's over, "on the ground safe and sound." (as I've said many times after each landing with my hang-glider.) Thanks for asking, Jeff. I loved it! Evening arrived; Diana met me at Bass Tavern, on the access road to the Sugarbush South Ski Area. Tonight was the end-of-season Sugarbush Annual Meeting. This was our first meeting.

We shared our table with Sal DeFrancisco and his lovely wife, Coui. I learned to fly hang-gliders with Sal at the Stowe Sky School in 1975. Sal and I each became members of Sugarbush earlier in the year, and each of us have been soloing in the trainers and looking forward to getting our private soaring license. It was an enjoyable evening but the layout was not very conducive to meeting new people.

After the dinner, elections for next year's Board of Directors were held. To top off a very good day for me, I became one of the new Club directors. My new friend, Jeff, was also elected onto the Board. There are nine directors. I feel privileged to hold this office and look forward to learning a lot and hope to contribute what I can too. Mostly, I want to fly.

What a wonderful day!

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