Or, How I got to FL245 and then got lost

FL245 Scott

This is the story of three people: Scott Penrose (a budding glider pilot), Geoff Vincent (a wave & weather expert and teacher) and Brian Wood (tuggie extrodinare), and a flight to FL245 … oh and about getting lost.

The Gliding Club of Victoria organises four camps to the Grampians during the winter to find Wave at the Grampians. As you can guess, hitting the exact weather conditions on weekends booked in advance is pretty unlikely. As circumstance and chance combined I got the opportunity to go for one day up to the Grampian Soaring Club after a promising email from Geoff Vincent regarding the weather conditions on 25th of June 2008.

Life is full of opportunities, you just have to keep your eyes open. What is even more amazing is how life is full of friends who are willing to put in more than you expect.

I drove up, got stuck on the ring road (a truck accident), arrived late, rigged my glider, introduced myself and received a briefing for the area all just in time to see the others launch. It turned out to be a very average day, and I didn't make an attempt. As it turned out it was a good move. Later that afternoon we had 30 knot winds and I heard around Victoria there was up to 60 knots! So it was good to have myself and my glider inside.

Perhaps this is a good time to talk about my beautiful glider. Many pilots advised against purchasing the Cobra, mostly because of the wood constructions and medium performance. But here’s the thing. My Cobra is a beautiful design, in perfect condition, has flown 800K flights (my longest is 400K, still, I am working on that), easy to maintain and is capable of almost everything I could want. Most of the time you are into gliding for yourself, and competing against yourself. And here I prove again that a vintage glider has the ability.

FL245 Brakes

After a quick negotiation with the family and a couch to sleep on I decided to stay the night for another attempt. This gave me the opportunity to spend a large chunk of the day with Geoff. Geoff went through some PowerPoints and drawings. This time spent was very valuable as it provided me with a good basis for the flight to come, and a very enjoyable afternoon. I also spent the time updating my little cheat sheet (Vne at height, coordinates of main mountains, radio frequencies, good places to outland etc).

The next morning started off looking great; westerly winds, strong on the ground but stronger up high. There was little cloud cover but we could see at least one line showing wave.

Geoff launched with Tom in the Janus. I strapped in, connected my oxygen and prepared. Soon the Janus was back on the ground finding no lift. We were about to call it off and check the weather again. But I decided that I had already spent enough money giving up two days work and driving up there, so a launch was going to happen! A brief conversation over my glider with Geoff and Brian and we decided to tow under the main rotor and try for lift on the far side.

Hardest tow I have ever had. I was working really hard for almost 20 minutes. At one point we went from 4500 down to 3000, the sink was that strong. Still lots of good practice on the airbrakes and dealing with slack ropes.

We reached the far side and instantly found 11 knots of lift. I held on for 20 more seconds, reaching about 5000 feet and released. Straight away I was in 13 knots of lift which slowed off to about 3 as I hit 14,000. I had now reached the highest I had ever flown and knew that it was all worth while.

FL245 Cloud

The next 30 minutes was spent investigating the wave, moving forward and back to try out the best locations. I was soon up to 18,000 and it was time to take off the canula and don the mask. It was my first flight with oxygen, but I had practised on the ground. I also wore a pulse oxymeter to monitor my blood oxygen levels, which mostly stayed around 94, but could drop as low as 85 (80 is the technical start of hypoxia) - any time it went into the 80s, I just had to make sure I was breathing normally again and it soon returned to low 90s. But to change to my mask I knew I was going to be off for a minute, so I double checked then started switching.

What I had not realised was that I was not now flying into wind. I was keeping a good lookout, but not paying attention to drift. By the time I had switched to mask, made sure my oxygen levels were good, I had wandered almost 6km down wind. In these winds that is probably about one turn! It took me over 5000' to get back to where I started changing my mask.

So back down now to about 13,000 - silly mistake.

Wind at that height seemed to be about 50+ knots. So it was a long trip back, especially considering you can't fly as fast. (The wind was probably more than 50, as my IAS was 50 to stay stationary at over 15,000). But soon the magic started to happen and I was climbing again, only 1 knot, but going up. After a while I managed to keep it in a steady 2 knots up.

By 22,000 feet I was starting to get cold, my feet anyway. But I kept moving them. I moved my left hand up next to my face so that I could scan my pulse oxymeter every time I moved my head - keeping constant track of my oxygen levels at such heights.

At 24,000 I started working on my descent. FL245 is the max height without air traffic approval. Technically I could ask to get that approval, and it has so far always been given. But going above 24,500 with no backup oxygen system would make me a bold pilot, and I intend to be an old one. And my feet were cold, so I pulled the wheel down, pulled out the brakes and headed down wind into the sink area.

FL245 Trace

This took some time though; I was still going up for a while. You would think that brakes equal about 5 knots down, so if I was going 2 up, I should be going down, but wave is not very predictable.

I had done it. My first flight in wave and I reached as high as I could go (safely). I had just hoped to reach wave for the first time, but I did so much more. I gained over 18,000 in height. Technically an easy Diamond Goal - but I don't own an approved logger, just FLARM and XCSoar so I can't actually claim it. I can't wait for FLARM to be authorised so I can start claiming my Gold and Diamond flights!

My original plan was to use my height to look around, investigate up wind a little, try out the wave over Victorian ranges. But by this stage (about 2.5 hours) I had been in the air long enough, and my feet were starting to hurt. I was warm everywhere else.

Fortunately my glider is poly-coated, not gell, so I just pulled the brakes and came down at about 17 knots. Lots faster than you would in a gell-coat glider, which you should restrict to less than 5. Soon I was down to 12,000.

I spent some time up there just enjoying the clouds, but also picking nice big holes to come down through. I forgot to mention that by the time I launched it was quite cloudy, probably 6/8th coverage. I picked a great big hole, and could see a hill below and started my descent.

This whole time I had made sure that Ararat was still about 10K away. Spiralling down through the hole meant that I was now down to about 4500, with elevation of Ararat at 1000. During my flight, my glide computer was set to track up - this was a mistake, as often I was going backwards (relative to ground), so the glide computer would calculate the angle to waypoint incorrectly. I therefore ignored my glide computer when it told me to fly 180 degrees from my current position as that would mean west - back to the mountains.

But I was lost. I had no idea which mountain was in front of me and I thought my glide computer was flipping around due to the wind.

To calm down, I removed my oxygen system, turned it off and took in my surroundings. I then realised that the big wind turbines were near by, and they are east of Ararat. It wasn't long before I realised I had gone 10km east of Ararat. I now had about 2000 spare to head more than 10km into over 30 knots of head wind back to the field. I didn't think that was likely so I picked a big paddock, making sure I knew the direction of the wind.

I could see the airfield now, so I kept moving towards it, watching and picking paddocks, and flying at about 65 to 70 knots. In the end I crossed the threshold of the airfield at about 500 above the fence, and did a nice short landing (with that amazing wind) onto the grass runway. Phew.

Imagine after 24,500 feet if I had landed in a paddock!

An amazing experience, a welcome crew of experienced and friendly pilots, a vintage glider and a very happy Scott that dreams of his next adventure into wave. My thanks especially to Geoff Vincent and Brian Wood of Grampian Soaring Club for making me so welcome.

To help answer some of the more technical questions (like where is further reading, what equipment did you use) I have started a list, which I will update on my site http://scott.dd.com.au/wiki/Wave/