Baby Logic #54 – Wrestling

August 22, 2012Uncategorizedadmin

Ro: Daddy, come on, let’s wrestle! So you can get strong like me!!!

Uvalde WGC 2012 – that’s a wrap!

August 19, 2012flyingadmin

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!

Uvalde WGC 2012 – Wednesday update

August 19, 2012flyingadmin

I wanted to give an update from Uvalde’s World Gliding Championship (WGC) where I’m towing this week with our club’s Pawnee.

The weather continues to be hot and fast and winners of all three classes (Open, 18m- and 15m FAI) are turning in speeds of 155-160km/h (almost 100mph) over task lengths of up to 700km.

The heat and the amount of flying is taking a toll on the pilots and crews – you can see the exhaustion in many faces.

So far the contest had no major accidents that involved injuries. We had one ASW-22BLE self launching, not getting off the runway and ending up in the fence with some fuselage damage. The unlucky pilot was unable to continue the contest.

But the flying has been great with clouds every day so far and cloud base up to 11,000ft in the Hill Country, but more commonly 8-9000ft.

The launch operations last usually a little more than an hour and take place from 12:30 until 14:00 weather dependent. We tow from two parallel runways with eleven towplanes, mostly pawnees, two Cessnas and Two AgWagons. Our Pawnee is one of the best climbers in the 235hp bunch (the Cessna is stronger).

The FAA from the San Antonio FSDO was there yesterday and today and I got ramp checked – exciting, but we had our paperwork in order. They are also watching operations and ensure that no “aerobatic flight by the FAA definition” takes places during the towing process.

Finishers usually start coming back between 5 and 7p depending on the task length. On one day, the contest finish time was set at 20:12 and some pilots had to land off field – there are hefty penalties for flying after sunset.

Last night there was the international party at the tent at the airfield. Every nation’s team offered a dish and/or bevarage – the Belgian beer and Italian pasta both were very popular.

The dry conditions make the launch operation very challenging due to the dust produced by the landing and taxiing tow planes in the dirt adjacent to the runway. In the interest of turnaround time we land next to the grid, not on the runway. Yesterday I was stuck in a dust cloud unable to taxi in position – it was literally IMC for a minute. The dust leaves a very funny taste in your mouth. Eveybody is suffering a bit on the ground. Today I landed into a developing dust devil and completely lost visibility half way into the flare. I finally found the ground safely. 🙂

The weather prognosis has all remaining days as flying days, so we expect to have three more days of hot races with blistering speeds.

As always, you can follow the track on the WGC Uvalde 2012 website (under tracking, Spot) The start gate times of the competitors are published during the race day on the scoring page.

Saturday will be the last contest day, with a big party in the evening. The worlds will close on Sunday morning with the winners ceremony starting at 9:30a.

That’s it for now.