Indiana Wants Me
On Saturday, Kris and I decided to test out his tow rig again at Cullom . Conditions looked to be quite good with a brisk NNW wind turning N at the Indiana/Illinois border. We set our sites on going to Kentucky. Big John towed me up around 11:30 into a fat thermal, I took it to cloudbase at 5300’. Kris meanwhile had a line break and had to relaunch with some delay. He took off around 12:30. We both had no trouble darting from cloud to (the cloud spacing was tight early) as we headed SSE down the state and eventually into Indiana.
SW of Terre Haute, IN a thick fast moving narrow band of cirrus blew through from the west momentarily stopping me cold as the ground shaded over completely. I saw it coming and headed to the SE trying to outrun it but it was moving at well over 50mph and very quickly overran my path. I changed gears and went into survival mode telling myself to stop for any lift. Until this time average climbs (from thermal entry to exit) were in the 400-500fpm range with peaks in the 800fpm range. At 3500’msl I felt a bubble and searched out a 50-100fpm climb. Thirty minutes later, I was back at 5800’. The cirrus was now gone and the clouds were looking robust again.
Meanwhile Kris was charging hard from behind hitting three 500-600fpm climbs to help close the gap. He was far enough behind that the cirrus was gone by the time he cruised through the overcast area I had encountered (timing). He spent over an hour cruising between 5000 and 6000’ only stopping briefly to grab some precious altitude before pushing on. I could tell he was getting close as his radio transmissions were now clear as a bell.
The problem was that back at launch we got too amped up when we saw clouds forming at 10:30 and didn’t take the time to put in a task. I had Franklin, KY in my instrument but he had a different waypoint. So our communications were useless relative to location. After digging out under the overcast, conditions improved markedly. I was able to stay higher and had my strongest climb of the day west of Wheatland, Indiana to 6000’. The clouds now were thinning out and there was a heavily forested area to the south so I diverted to the SE to ensure my track was over landable terrain. I thermaled up under the last cloud and glided downwind landing near Velpen, IN. Kris took a slightly different track more to the south and did the same landing near Somerville.
We ended up with 301 and 300km respectively. Woohoo what an awesome day! As is his habit, John Enrietti was “johnny on the spot” pulling up to me just as I put the last strap on my Wills Wing TIII (awesome glider BTW!) and soon we had Kris and headed back. I made it home at 3:00am and spent Sunday recovering. Kris of course went flying again (beast!). Our two flights put Kris in first and me in second place for the hang gliding world online xc contests (XContest and Leonardo). Not bad for a couple of midwestern flatlanders eh!
