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Ray Wood While reading a book filled with tales of adventure I came across two quotes defining adventure, "The oldest most widespread stories in the world are adventure stories, about human heroes who venture into the myth countries at the risk of their lives and bring back tales of the world beyond men. It could be argued that the narrative art itself arose from the need to tell an adventure that man risking his life and perilous encounters constitutes the original definition of what is worth talking about." Written by Paul Zweig From; The Adventurer "Having an adventure shows that someone is incompetent, that something has gone wrong . Adventure is interesting enough in retrospect. At the time it happens, it usually constitutes an exceedingly disagreeable experience." Written by a man by the name of Stephanson who wrote My Life With The Eskimo I decided these were better definitions for misadventure. So, I resolved to research one that more accurately describes adventure. My search lead me through articles and books quoting great explorers and thrill seekers. The list included many who had achieved great fame for their efforts, the Wright brothers, Jacques Cousteau, Sir Edmund Hillary, Will Steger, Lynn Hill, Amellia Earhart, the team of Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager the list goes on from the deepest ocean to great heights and on into space, "the final frontier." I discovered that many did it "because it was there" and at best they fumbled to give definition to their accomplishments. Gene Rodenberry's fictional character Captain James T. Kirk had the most succinct definition, To boldly go where no man has gone before. Although not "politically correct" (nothing is simple any more) it serves as a good definition for soaring. Every time we launch in a glider although the geography below may look comfortingly familiar, we fly through the unseen, uncharted, ever changing halls of air. I open this article by comparing adventure to misadventure to reinforce the idea that with correct preparation our soaring experiences will be told at length as tales of "Great Adventures," not quickly and quietly the tales of misadventure. A Recipe for Adventure - 1 promising looking soaring day (complete with maps, weather covering the route and tephigrams in hand) CAS Cross Country Clinic - Day one, Monday August 14 The participants were introduced and the pairs were set up as follows: Cross country Students Psalm - The Joerg is my shepherd; I shall not want (title by Eric Gillespie) The Joerg is my shepherd; I shall not want. The whole idea of pairing was for the flying portion of the clinic which was to take place each afternoon. As happened with many flying events this year, things didn't go as planned. An informal lesson in meteorology left us in ground school for the whole day Monday. Tuesday was much the same including such advanced weather related subjects as Tephigram analysis to show exactly why we weren't flying and what to look for in a potentially great soaring day. We made good use of our time covering all the topics in the CAS Clinc Cross Country Manual The ground school was lively to say the least, the group widely varied in experience levels including students who previously acted as shepherds, shepherds with more hours logged of contest flying than I have of flying hours. The experience of these pilots added a great deal to the discussion of many of the theories and how to apply them in varied circumstances. By Wednesday morning, August 16, everyone was anxious to start flying. A check of the weather indicated a flyable day but with higher than ideal winds to make things more challenging. Since we don't always fly on perfect days, this would be a learning opportunity. The preparations were made and we launched a gaggle of students and shepherds to discover some better than expected thermals in spite of the 30 knot winds aloft. Joerg and I launched early in the grid, cored a good one and were gone to fly cross country as planned. We set off northwest into the wind, with Joerg in the lead. However about 15 minutes out conditions rapidly showed to be less than ideal, Joerg turned back to SOSA advising me to do the same. At about 5 km out Joerg announced," This could be an excellent opportunity to practice low saves, if you find ANYTHING stick with it". After that we were not able to climb reliably enough to venture further than 10 km out from SOSA. So much for plans. One of the shepherds landed out but I believe all of the students made it back to SOSA. Some of us with more challenges than others, with conditions, as Kathryn Burany will tell you. A Study of the Undersides of Gliders from 2000' Below (by Kathryn Burany) I have been around gliding for 25 years, and have been actually flying for 12 of those years. Unfortunately, an unexpected out-landing when I was 14 broke my confidence (but not the plane). Although I have been instructing for 5 years and have flown many different types of gliders, I was losing interest in the sport. I began to stretch my flights away from the club but could never get myself more than 50 km away before turning around. I decided it was time to cut the apron strings and I signed up for the CAS Cross-Country clinic in August 2000. "Watch out for that wind!" It was the third day of the cross-country clinic and the first day we were going to fly. The previous days had been filled with lots of ground school, lots of stories, and well, lots of beer. My shepherd, Tracie Wark, assured me that it would be a great day. After a briefing on centering thermals, navigation, final glides, and OTHER THINGS you boys wouldn't understand, we set out on our task. With winds aloft gusting to 31 knots from the northwest, we knew it would be a challenging day. Rick Hernan (a visitor from Pennsylvania) and I said our good-byes, convinced that the next time we saw each other would be in a field somewhere in Southern Ontario. At Brantford (a mere 25 km away), I just couldn't connect. Tracie pulled her spoilers to come to my height and help out. The winds scattered the thermals making it difficult to center and every turn would push you further away from your destination. Our computer traces would later show that not one turn that day was a perfect circle, they were all oval. That showed just how strong the wind was! As I was drifting to the southeast side of Brantford and getting lower, the radio gave out (a wire disconnected from the speaker - thanks for fixing it Scott!) Then in my darkest hours, I lost visual and radio contact with Tracie. If she had followed me any lower or more downwind, she would have risked landing out. Having lost all contact with each other, Tracie gave a radio call to '19' and reported: "Steve, I've lost your daughter." Tracie put her confidence in my decision making and left me to concentrate on landing safely. Everyone thought the next time they heard from me would be on the cell phone calling from a field... filled with cow manure. I set a course back to SOSA and bumped my way back on the edge of a cloud street. I also put our ground school lectures into practice: LOOK UP AT THE CLOUDS, NOT DOWN AT THE FIELDS. As every minute passed, I was thankful that I had listened to the lecture about speed-to-fly and also that I had only one cup of coffee that morning. I couldn't believe it when I saw SOSA and realized that I was going to make it! I even managed to squeeze out a circuit, joining the downwind leg midway and safely landing at the airport. Rick had made it back as well and reported (to my delight) that some SHEPHERDS hadn't even ventured away from the club that day! Everyone was surprised when I called to say I was down...at SOSA! I really felt like I had grown as a pilot, and more so as a cross-country pilot. Thank you to Tracie for all her help and to my dad whose advice rings true, "If you want to start cross-country soaring, start with a small country." Thursday was cloudy so back to class to review flying in windy conditions, and a great opportunity to review handling of GPS, Colibri data loggers and final glide calculators. Friday was spent doing field maintenance and relaxing. Saturday and Sunday of the clinic were planned as mini contest to try our new found skills as cross country racing pilots. Since none of us had a worthwhile shot at honing our skills under the supervision of our shepherd, it was decided to use the weekend for this purpose. Saturday was a rerun of Wednesday, able to sustain flight but forward progress was difficult. Sunday August 20, this is finally it ... the day we've all been waiting for. The plan was laid, we would start off and fly as a group following the 300K triangle Rockton, Aylmer, Mt. Forest, Rockton. Again the preparations were made and the grid was launched. Today things were different! Again I launched early and found excellent thermals, large, easy to centre and they seemed to appear just as I descended to about 3000 ft. AGL. In a quick radio call to Joerg he advised me to proceed slowly on course ahead of the pack while the launch continued, he would catch up ASAP, I saw Joerg for the first time at about 16:30 at Guelph where he was waiting for me so that we could complete our final glide to SOSA together. And now, the details of what happened in between the radio call and final glide ... I was making good progress, right up to the point I listened to my radio, and I was certain my track line had taken me 5 km south of the pack's projected path so I "corrected" my path to intersect theirs only to find I had caused myself to do an unnecessary crossing of a sink street twice. If I had paid more attention in the navigation class, I would have known I could have easily made the Aylmer turn-point and headed out with height to spare. As it worked out, I was able to round the turn point and after several long lonely minutes flying through heavy over development, by staying as high as possible I hooked up with the tail of the pack ... head to tail of the pack in one decision! The over development changed the day for many, one shepherd landed out at Tillsonburg airport while other shepherds doubled back to help struggling students "dig it out of the dandelions". At this point several teams climbed back to the working band and headed for SOSA, while others made their way to Mt. Forest . I remained with the group that carried on, trying to follow Jim and Tony and was rewarded with the pleasure of my first long run with another glider just off my wing tip. Those few moments were memorable after the struggle to catch the pack, wondering if I'd see another glider again that day. Minutes later I found myself circling in weak lift, listening to radio chatter of gliders ahead talking about deteriorating lift at the turn point and decided it was a good time to head home. I turned over Arthur with the sky ahead turning blue, cautiously picking my way home. As I approached Guelph, I was delighted to hear Joerg's voice asking my location, afer a few minutes of circling to gain altitude for final glide I moved on to meet up with him. Once again, flying tip to tip with one of the pros, although my tips were several hundred feet higher due to performance differences and more conservative final glide calculations. A great way to finish the day... a personal best flight with good company. Well, I guess I let the tale get a little long, but it's difficult to sum up a great learning experience like a CAS clinic in a few words, the best I can say is " sign up for one it will improve your soaring." Addendum Timmy's, clicks and other interesting words by Rick Hernan US of EH Ok, eh, this is an introduction to the CAS cross country clinic held at SOSA from someone who lives south of the border. The first thing that you will need to know is that that most of the people there speak a different language. They are a talented and friendly lot, but you have to speak their language in order to fully appreciate what they are telling you. Here's a little glossary that might help: Timbits - Little round edible delights that are served with coffee very early in the morning at a place called Timmy's. You recognize it as the only place where there are lines of normal looking people. . . . all of whom are waiting to get their Timbits and coffee. Usage: " Who is going to make the Timbits run at seven am?" A Boot - No matter how it sounds, it has nothing to do with footwear. As best as I can tell, it means "near" or "around". Usage: "I'll meet you at the clubhouse aboot seven." Click - Some unknown unit used to measure distances. This might be close to a kilometer, whatever the hell that is. Usage: "Timmy's is aboot 10 clicks from the clubhouse." RJ - Regional Jet. Usage: "Holy Crap, eh, there's an RJ headed right toward the gaggle!" Anyone thinking aboot the clinic should go buy a copy of "Strange Brew", a McKenzie brother's movie that is a great introduction to the language up there. |
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