This Week @ GGC: Interclub Flying & Fly-In

A magnificent weekend of flying at Pendleton. The weather was wonderful, with thermals abounding ever upward on both days.

SATURDAY 09 June

Club aircraft flew with 15 flights. Several Club members had extended flights greater than an hour or thereabouts, and the GGC/MSC/RVSS Interclub Competition got underway about mid-day, with initial scratchy thermals to around 3,500 ft., but this improved considerably throughout the afternoon, with the last gliders coming home to roost at about 5:30 p.m., with LIFT still in the air - but MILLER_Time beckoned.

Early on in the inter-club contest arena, one pilot who shall remain nameless asked over the radio if the Contest was still “ON” due to the scratchy conditions making it a little challenging to get away from the airfield initially. However, a diplomatic voice from the organizing pilot announced that he was at 4,400 ft., and that it was soarable. Thus motivated, the private owners competing, magically all managed to get away. At about 4:00 p.m. or so, while flying around the greater Pendleton area in the Puchacz for a couple of hours or more, it was interesting to hear the radio chatter of the competition pilots exchanging information on where the best lift was, and to form a mental picture of beautiful white, high performance machines flying all over the skies in various locations, some roughly 100 kms away from Pendleton, and all hoping to return in the next 1 – 1 ½ hours or so as the afternoon dragged on and the Summer sun slowly descending on its daily trajectory down towards the horizon, but still imparting enough energy to the atmospheric ocean to permit our valiant wanderers to be able to return, as all did.

At that snapshot time (4:00 p.m., approx.), I could hear Ian and Tim, about 5-10 miles apart down near Iroquois on the St. Lawrence River, exchanging notes and looking for a glimpse of each other, and Roger somewhere near Casselman, and Nick (who often maintains a degree of radio silence) somewhere around St. Andre Avelin, when quizzed by Christine about his location, and probably, if I am correct from her vantage point in a Club L-33. At 4,500 ft. myself, I could see the silver ribbon of the St. Lawrence and the hills of upper New York state on the hazy southern Horizon, and pondered for a few moments about lift-drag ratios (glide angles) of 40-50, and how far the sport of gliding had progressed in the last two decades, that made it possible for these second generation, high performance sailplanes to be able to fly cross country at fairly high average speeds (especially with water ballast aboard), and to routinely, almost every good weekend, fly 2-300 km triangles or more, across country. Also the use of modern GPS systems, eases any navigational reliance on map-reading (although still a good thing to do), and always points the way home.

Anyway, I hope I haven’t bored you with this narrative, but felt compelled to paint a word picture of this wonderful sport, at the top-end, from a tired old Aero. Engineer who, while understanding the scientific underlying principles, still marvels at the magic of close to ½ a ton of man and machines can glide effortlessly on rising currents of air in the convective atmospheric ocean, supplied from solar energy.

Doug L-L

Photos: Roger H.

SUNDAY 11 June

Today, Pendleton, a “no-fly zone” for anything but whispering gliders, was about to be transformed into a gigantic beehive, thanks to Martin Lacasse who had broadcasted the magic call sign: Bravo, Bravo, Quebec!

With friends in high places, he had something cooking “de la barbe à la queue” (which is the origin of the word barbecue)!

It started small, with a timid trike which escaped before the rush…

but it did not take long before you could hear the buzz of bigger visitors...

At some point, you wondered if NAVCAN had redirected all of its general aviation traffic from Dorval, as you counted the number of aircraft on final.

Around noon, Pendleton was a hive of activity with more than 20 aircraft on the Tarmac.

The start of our flight line operation was delayed due to a change in the active runway which set the fur flying at the end of runway 13 and made Martin wonder where was the beef. But we finally managed to make it work.

In the meantime, we had a trainer on display for advertising…

…informing people about our safe training method: tie the student to the seat before you give him the stick! This way, he can touch wood at all times.