Early season summary of cross-country flying and a couple of ridge pictures

As June starts, a review of the season shows a reasonable start. 9 club pilots have flown 43 flights in the Canadian Online Contest ( onlinecontest.org ).  The usual goals are flying the distance across Canada (6,521 km), once around the Earth (40,075 km), and for the Soaring Association of Canada, the distance from the Earth to the Moon (384,400 km).

How are we doing?  As of 8 June, GGC pilots have claimed 6,817 km of cross-country flying (flights in Canada only, 8187 km in North America) - so we have already flown across Canada, and are on our way back! We're less than a quarter of the way around the Earth, but La Nina usually gives us a dry summer, which is great, compared to El Nino, which gives lower cloud bases and shorter distances.  SAC has flown 209,309 km cross-country so far, more than halfway to the Moon (54.5%)!

We are working on FAI badge claims for two "C" Badges (one hour after release), two "Silver Duration" flights - five hours (aka "The Big Sit"), and a number of pilots are chasing the elusive 300 km "Gold Distance" flights (closest so far made 260 km before going "Aux vaches" - 'to the cows').  There was one 750 km "Diploma" flight attempt in the US which failed due to a power interruption on the flight recorder on a turbulent day.

All of this, in aircraft without engines, all solar powered.  The club has four single seat gliders; those doing Badge attempts just show up at 0900 at the Hangar and declare a flight, and the glider is theirs for the day (a few times a season). Each is equipped with a flight recorder (TR, our L-33, needs to use a club Colibri logger, the others have PowerFLARM IGC Flight Recorders).

We know a lot of pilots are flying a lot more km than we are claiming. The OLC is a great place to store your IGC files, and it is simple to do.

Will we make it once around the Earth?  Will SAC make it to the moon?  Stay tuned...

Two photos of flying at the Ridge in Pennsylvania... one, just floating down the ridge, about 1,500' above it, with north winds giving ridge lift (about 3 knots at this speed). You can see how the thermals are concentrated by the wind along the ridge. Very convenient to find lift... if there are Cu.

Click to make larger

Second, on a different flight, the air was more stable, and dropped off the plateau, rebounded off the ground, and made a wave. The plateau is 2,000' above sea level, the wave went much higher than you might expect... here, I'm passing 10,400', and I made it to 11,500' eventually (limited to 18,000' in the US, unless you have a letter of agreement with Air Traffic Control, 12,500' in Eastern Canada; you are required to use oxygen in Canada above 13,000'); very gentle lift. This is the first time I've flown wave in PA; very different than Colorado or Lake Placid.  This wave was falling on the ridge, just downwind, and 'suppressing' the ridge, which caused a little consternation for those who assumed it would be 'working'... but no one landed out.  It's kind of magic, gently climbing above the clouds... For pilots, notice the attitude difference for 52 kts vs 37 kts...

Gliding/Soaring - every day is different