Uvalde roundup:
Yesterday, Saturday was the last contest day at the record worlds in Uvalde.
After the midair collision in the 15m class the day before (nobody was injured, two ASG-29 were damaged/lost, the french pilot flew back with the damaged ship, the Austrian pilot bailed out with a manual parachute), the last day was one of the trickiest weather wise. We woke up to an overcast sky to the north with midlevel clouds from a trough making its way slowly to the south.
We finally managed to launch the field an hour later than originally planned and Cu development was great towards the south.
On the last two days the city had watered down the dirt landing strips adjacent to the runways each morning, which helped greatly in dust avoidance.
It was a very gusty day and energy management was challenging in the tow planes – we got tossed around in our airplanes quite a bit and each landing was different – some nice, some not so nice ones. Everybody was tired, too.
On one landing I saw a dust devil developping fast on my runway as I was decending through the last 100ft. Someone readioed in: “Checker Tail, you have the dust devil?”.
As I touched down, the dust devil intensified to what looked like a sand storm moving right into my way. I had visions of being flipped over with the tow plane. It was too late for a go around. Instead I hit the brakes hard, and wheeled around it, 45 degrees to the left first, and then 180 degrees around the back side of it back to the grid. “I drove around it!” was my response… I got to see this not so little devil from all sides as it was moving slowly off the airport. Extra excitement!
Unknownst to the public the tow pilots had their own little competition during the contest. 🙂 We had a white barrel for the rope drops on each side with a camera installed on top of it. It was like pumpkin drop with ropes. Only that it was occuring at higher speeds at the end of the green arc…
On one day someone managed to lay his rope over the barrel (the goal was to hit the metal barrel with the ring pair for the “cling” sound – which we managed on several occasions. That particular day a consecutive drop managed to hit the rope off the barrel! Oh, how much fun that was!! And all that with the FAA watching and not taking any issue with the low passes and consecutive 45 bank and pull-ups for a left downwind. Felt like an officially sanctioned low level fun contest. At times there were up to five towplanes in 1/2 mile spacing going in for the drop. Nobody got carried away as the FAA had all our certificate numbers tucked away in their pockets from the previously perfromed ramp checks. 🙂
After the last tows the tow plane caravan would taxi back to the FBO, tie down and the pilots gathered in the briefing room for an immediate de-brief while enjoying refreshments and sandwiches. Any safety issues would be discussed immediately – most days we didn’t have any, but there were some with cut off tow planes or conflicting glider traffic in the tow path. I haven’t had any close calls. The mantra of the chief tow pilot was: “Keep it boring!” And his first question at the meeting always was: “Was it boring today? – Good! Keep it that way!!”
For the most part we kept the excitement to the tow rope drops. I will get the DVD and will make it available for general viewing pleasure, though I’m hesitant to post it on the web, despite of the FAA’s officially sanctioning of the procedure… it still puzzles me why they didn’t take issue with it… 🙂
One key learning for me is that contest towing is quite different from club towing. At the contest it’s not about the tow turnaround speed, but all about the tow plane spacing and sequencing. We had 7 tow planes on the east side working the 15 and 18m class. Turnaround times were in the 7-8minute range, so 1 minute spacing ideally, including the full-stop landing and hook-up.
You can imagine that with different tow plane and pilot capabilities the spacing management was challenging at times. I’ve seen the Walmart holding pattern a couple of times to avoid sitting on the runway kicking up dust while waiting for the next tow. The best pilots were pacing themselves to naturally keep the tow planes spaced, which required to be aware of the positions of the three or four planes ahead of you at all times. Since our tow plane is so strong, I had to slow myself down quite often.
Overall we managed 165 tows during the three week period. Thanks to Rich Schaefer, Tom West and everybody else who helped with ferrying for this contest.
The plane is currently in Uvalde and Bill Snead will ferry it back to Spicewood today, weather permitting.
And that’s a wrap!
Wheels up!