Return To Kitty Hawk - A Personal Experience
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No race sailplane across the country has ever achieved 100% flying days and the RTKH was no exception . We flew 5 race legs and several pilots flew an extra leg or two. I managed to fly the Terry to Caesar Creek leg after that leg was officially canceled. The total distance covered was just short of 1100 miles, and the crew car registered around 8000 miles ( twice across the country) by the end. Every leg was different and not one was without challenges. With the amazing GPS driven technologies every flight completed can be re-lived and for those that may be interested I have a complete set of logs, barograms and statistics from each leg. Amazing stuff !

Day 1 - Crystalaire- near Los Angeles to Jean NV - near Las Vegas After three days of hard driving and a couple of practice days at Crystalaire (Just north of the San Gabriel mountains on the north edge of the Los Angeles basin) the first race day took place. Crystalaire for those who might not know is the home of the "Crystal Squadron", a dedicated group of pilots who fly straight-out flights ( usually more than 500km ) each weekend. There is a reason why. When the marine air pushes in over the mountains from the Pacific Ocean each afternoon the lift in the desert areas is effectively killed and getting back to Crystal is nearly impossible on most days. That's where LOCAL KNOWLEDGE plays a vital role. Hannes Linke, a friend and highly experienced local pilot and ex Smirnoff participant was the guru I sought advice from that day. "Don't try to fly the direct course line" he advised " The marine air will stream up into the desert from San Bernadino through the Cajon pass in the mountains, and the lift will just not be there". Even despite that advice which I took, and a 12000 ft. msl start height I only found my first decent thermal after a straight glide of 73 miles - a long way even in a Ventus 2C. Incidentally the marine layer was so complete that as we thermalled above the San Gabriel mountains at the start the whole LA Basin was completely covered with white cloud. A good tail wind helped and I flew above the high ground as recommended by the locals. The flight analysis shows an achieved L/D of 68.5 for the flight. Believe it or not but a comment from Karl Striedieck about his experience many years previous came back to me as I crossed the last obstacle before Jean. He had encountered very rough air after Clark Mountain. It was there 30 years later too! Unfortunately soaring lost one of it's most dedicated that day as Gene Carapetyan died in an accident before the start of the race. Most unexplained as he was a very high time pilot (15000 hours) and flying out of his "home" field. There was no worse way we could have started the event. A reminder that we can never be too careful when flying.

Day 2 - Estrella-near Phoenix to Las Cruces, NM The preparation for any glider race is important but when each new day starts from an airport two or three hundred miles from the last one, and a new set of charts and a new database is required to be installed in the GPS etc. preparation really shows . How about a curved ball too? With fierce wildfires burning across Arizona and New Mexico some Temporary Flight Restrictions had been published which now prevented us from flying the direct course line to Las Cruces. My charts I had so painstakingly prepared were next to useless, and I needed to add a steering turnpoint to the data base as we now were required to fly down south of Tucson to avoid the fires 340 miles over some very rough country was the task for the day. Fortunately the Ventus 2 is equipped with a Garmin GPS with a US database which I would have to rely on that day. As Estrella Airfield is in an area suffering from a prolonged drought no water ballast was available so we would fly "dry". For me the start was good, and I left at maximum possible height taking a westerly route down towards Tucson. The landscape is really unfriendly that way but the ground is higher and that was what I thought was the best strategy. When I met Doug Jacobs (DJ) halfway down the first leg I was sure my strategy was sound. Lift for my whole flight averaged less than 350ft/min and on the first leg it was lower. As I turned Ruby Star and started flying east however things improved. Together with several gliders I found better thermals - usually downwind of the mountain ranges and on this leg I reached the best altitudes of the whole event - almost 15000msl. That's where LOCAL KNOWLEDGE paid off again. A mutual friend of Brad Hays and mine flies out of Phoenix and Casey Lennox had written me saying among other things that this area provided in his opinion some of the best thermic conditions anywhere. That belief kept me going until very late that day - I found my last thermal at 7:42 pm. and squeaked into Las Cruces as the sun set at 8:12 pm . A very good feeling. With thunderstorms predicted for the leg to Hobbs, and overcast conditions on the day we were to have flown to Dallas the 45 pilots and crews took to the roads and the next race day was to be out of TSA ( Texas Soaring Association) - south of Dallas.

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