Power Horse

This is a first generation tractor; bought and used in Fruita which is in Capitol Reef National Park now. This Oasis had/has many fruit orchards, we have apples and peaches with us now from there.

The principal behind this 1930s Power Horse, was that it replaced the horses quite literally - you can see the rope connectors for the controls. That's right, you hitched it up! Makes sense actually.

For Chad - one in Sepia...

Rain Pixie

They only appear in the rain, coming down out of these ancient trees...

500km Out and Return, with lots of deviation

Today I declared a 500km O/R up to Dry Mountain, near Salt Lake City and back. At 11am the sky was almost cloudless, but by midday it was already starting to look stormy. I launched full of water and struggled to climb under the overcast but eventually found 7kt and started straight away. Only a few km into the flight I had to divert to the east of a large rainshower - and then had to thread my way through the mountains, between two more storms, to get back on the western side of the overdevelopment (the east was forecast to storm completely). The rest of the flight up to Dry Mountain was a process of avoiding the storms, and I got the turn just before the heavens opened. A direct route back to Parowan was clearly impossible, and I got pushed further and further west into the desert, as the storms spread. Eventually I could see a route home, and as you can see the task looks more like an FAI triangle than an O/R. Very rough, strong, small thermals - almost impossible to center. I got closer today than ever before to opening my brakes to avoid being sucked into cloud.

The wackiest Out and Return trace ever

Looking North to Salt Lake City from Dry Mountain

The Western Desert of the Great Basin, with its 9000ft peaks

Reviewing these photos I can sympathise with anyone who thinks it looks like a great day - well it was, but very difficult. I just didn't take any photos of the storms, that's all.

Zion from above, and an O/R Blast

Today I decided to try to get down to Zion National Park, which I hadn't seen from the air before. Cloudbase was about 13,000, just enough, given the high terrain and lack of landing options. To always have an airstrip within glide, I had to basically take every decent thermal. Working band was about 11-13,000. Here are a couple of shots of Zion. It really is spectacular country.

Zion National Park from above

Looking down Zion Canyon

 After checking out Zion, I ran a cloudstreet north and back south again. Some spectacular statistics - from memory I did 169 miles without turning with a glide of 120:1! Here's the street looking back to the North at the end of the day. Shortly after this it started producing some spectacular fireworks.

Coming home - Airfield just beyond town

Arty Pics

From Grand Teton (the lake view) and Bryce Canyon. And Crater Lake

I'm in a black n white mood...

Two days in the air

Finally, after a week of waiting (and sightseeing) I got in the air yesterday and today.

Yesterday was a great day - and the first flight with my new V7 vario. A lot of tweaking still required there. But the day was good enough to get across to Bryce Canyon and review the sights we saw a few days ago from the ground. The perspective is certainly different!

This shot is from about 16,000ft. You can hardly tell there is a canyon there at all. Max cloudbase was about 17,000 but it varied a lot from place to place - with some areas being as low as 12,000. Believe me, that feels low when the ground is between 8 and 10,000!

Today I tweaked the vario (added a cruise climb switch and changed some settings) and it is a big improvement but I still don't trust the speed commander. The day started very weak because the wind was blowing down over the ridge to the east of the airfield.

Although the sky looked great, none of the climbs on our side of the ridge were connecting with the clouds. The other two pilots gave it away after being unable to get any higher than 11,000 (scratching the slopes) but I took a gamble and a long glide to the western side of the valley and was rewarded with a climb straight to 15,000. I then raced a cloud street to the south and back, and played chicken with the storms until being outmaneuvered by one which set itself up over the airfield. As  I glided in to land a bolt of lightning made me revise my plans and I turned tail, heading for the airfield at Cedar City, clear of any nasty weather. But I changed my mind again and decided to wait it out. While I was waiting I snapped this shot of Cedar Breaks, the amazing natural amphitheatre that we visited a couple of days ago.



In the end I landed at 6:30 after the storm had drifted away, dropping the wheel and pulling full brakes from 15,000ft.

Sunset over the fuel bowsers Parowan.

Wildlife in the Canyons

A small yellow bird about wren size; still don't know what it is but there were quite a few in Zion National Park. The ground squirrel eating the leaves was there too.

The other picture is the main amphitheatre in Bryce Canyon with stormy weather in the background.

Oh and the checkerboard rock is just after leaving Zion Canyon through the tunnel.

Who needs to chase storms

They just keep chasing us!

Sat at the airfield after cleaning RV...

Cedar Breaks, and another rest day

After leaving Bryce Canyon we headed back towards Parowan, and sure enough there was another huge canyon enroute, so we had to stop to get a few shots and take another hike... this one would have been stunning if we had not just been to Bryce. Cedar is deeper but not as broad, and with fewer Hoodoos. A ranger gave us a talk about how a cougar can jump 45 feet onto its prey and that there are plenty of them around - so many that there is an open hunting season. We didn't spot any. The sky might look good but just out of shot is another huge thudercloud.

Today has been another stormy day and the pattern is expected to continue. I almost decided to rig, but this was the sky behind the camper... so instead we went to Cedar City for the weekly dose of Walmart and a pizza dinner. That Urban Spoon app is great!

On to Bryce National Park

We stayed the night at Zion and then had a stunning drive through the hinterland to Bryce National Park. Several people had told us this was a 'must see' and it certainly was. As one person described it, a Disneyland of Hoodoos (Hoodoos are the towering person-shaped rock sculptures that are the highlight of the park).

We were amazed that at least 70% of the visitors were French - and most of the remainder from other European countries - with maybe only 5% American tourists. You very seldom heard English spoken - a bit like in downtown Brisbane(!)

Here are a couple of shots from the park rim and from down amongst the Hoodoos.

The photo doesn't really do the slope justice, but the path is a steep zigzag with 30 or 40 switchbacks. This shot taken from about halfway up.

Zion National Park

Rather than spend another rainy day at the airfield we decided to check out Zion National Park, an hour and a half's drive away. It is very busy - we got the last spot ( a disabled one) out of 330 in the campground, and that was about 1pm. Walking the trail down to The Narrows sometimes felt claustrophobic, not because of the terrain but the number of people - if you left the path, you had to wait for a gap in the human traffic to join it again! This photo belies what I said above -here's Dave in the apparently tranquil canyon...

and another picture taken in The Narrows where the trail crosses the stream...

Grommit drives into Zion

Zion national park and Bryce Canyon Nat pk is where we've been for a couple of days: hundreds of great photos to look thru yet. Here is one of an arch in the limestone inside Bryce taken with the iphone.

Cleaning RV

It's a big vehicle to clean!

The Legendary Parowan

Hi all, well we had a pretty uneventful drive across Nevada and into Utah (the land of the Mormon) yesterday, arriving at the wonderful flying site of Parowan in the late afternoon. Pilots continued returning from epic XC flights right the way up until after 8pm.

Today most of them are packing up, as the forecast is for a week of storms. We took advantage of the non-flying weather to install my new LX V7 vario, which I bought from Craggy Aero (great support). It's a beautiful instrument - but doesn't have its own built-in logger so I have sacrificed the butterfly and routed the Flarm GPS signal to the V7. Winpilot also hit the dust as I only have a cable from the C302 (which has gone to Craggy for repair).

All that took most of the day, especially as we had to make a trip into town to find a hardware store that sells metric diameter tubing for the vario (the old tubing was just a cm too short).

Here's a shot of me on the 6000ft altitude airfield, next to the windy Parowan Cliffs - you can run these for many many miles on a final glide to get home from an XC. I look forward to it...

Bristlecone Pine Tree

This one lived probably about 1500 to 2000 years, but is dead now. I will find some pics of some very old but alive ones later. They are very 'arty' trees in death...

Grommit in the Great Basin

Grommit driving us through the Great Basin, a huge inland area of flat 'cold' desert and mountain ranges. No water leaves the basin to the sea and in winter there is snow.

We stayed at the foot of Mt Wheeler in the national park, and hiked up to the glacier and saw many Bristlecone pines of 100 years old to around 4000 , and that's the living ones! (will put some photos up later- all on Fuji camera).

Opera House

In Eureka Nevada!

Overnight (15th) Austin NV

This small honesty box RV park ( full hookup ) appears to be run by the Baptist Church!

The town has seen better days, but looks interesting ( the better days were over 120 yrs ago tho...)

Also had a few beers in a pub run by a Serbian, interesting... Top place to visit if you are a Muslim (Not)!

Air Sailing Day 5 - the final day

Today they set a TAT (AAT) of 2.5 hours, so we'd be back in time for the 'banquet'. It was another great day, and I was very lucky to get away with a win - I made a major screwup. Yesterday my Cambridge C302 control knob broke so I could click it but not turn. As a result I couldn't adjust the altitude, volume, MacReady, etc so I took off with the altimeter reading 400ft high. After making a start out the top of the cylinder (through 10,000ft) , I spied a row of clouds forming in line with a different part of the start cylinder, and because it was early I decided to go back, drop below 10,000, and restart. Allowing for the 400ft start height discrepancy I dropped down to 10,200-10,300 for the requisite 2 minutes and then started through the side of the cylinder heading straight for the cus. From then on the day worked well and I had a blast. However somehow my track log showed me being just above 10,000 for some of the 2 minutes  I thought I was below. This was a 250pt penalty but I was fortunate that I had the earlier start, 12 minutes prior, which I was granted. That dropped my overall speed from 84 to 79mph but it was still enough to win the day (just).

Hi from Al & Dave at Air Sailing, Nevada

So that's it for the contest part of the trip - from now on we will be doing some flying but more touristy things for a while.

Last Q

All over

Winner of the trophy- Tim Garner : and Allan as a guest gained more than 5000 points over 5 days!

Also a pic of the air force academy preparing to launch the duo 4AF.

Keepin' Cool

Allan commented it was exhausting being on the ground during the rest day! The heat does where you down. They are out on task (2.5 hr AAT/TAT).

Remembering that cold can also be nasty...

What happens to a fan gun if the wind changes (and you are snoozing in the pump house). And what not to do to a ski-lift chair.

Air Sailing Day 4

Well yesterday was another day where I broke my personal best XC speed - 89mph. And that was with a slow first leg! I headed off on course looking for the customary 10+ kts, but kept finding 5 and 6 so pushed on. It looked good ahead and I had had 10kt prior to start so there was no reason I could see that they shouldn't still be around. Getting nervous I started taking the odd few thousand feet in weaker climbs, and finally connected with the good values about halfway down the first leg. I climbed quickly to 15,000 or so, knowing that I would need to go deep and over time to bring up my average speed. The clouds were rapidly overdeveloping into storms so I ran along the front edge and it worked well. Flew all the way to the back of the first circle and turned with 106mph required speed on the PDA (about 170km/hr) to come in spot on time. As I pushed back along the same line, lightning started sparking off to my right and the heavens opened. I managed to find a good line off to the left and avoided having to climb. When I got to the edge of the storm cloud I took a final climb to base in about 8 kt and then had a long smooth glide back towards the second area which was in the blue apart from a few wisps. My PDA showed me I would be about on time if I just nicked the area but I was above glide so I pushed deeper into the second area until showing about 15:1 glide, then turned for home. I was about 10 minutes over time which was just fine, but the day was won by an airforce cadet at his first comp! Here's a photo of the storm cloud starting to fall apart on the way home, and a shot of the signwriting on one of the Air Force Academy Discus trailers (they have 4 brand new Discus at this comp)

Today is a rest day, with 15kt thermals to 20,000 feet, as usual, but I am taking the day off.

Tomorrow is the final day of the comp and it looks like another great day. That's 7 in a row, including the practice and rest days!

Is it a boat or canopy cover?

A seriously serious cover! Great idea if you are tied down outside for extended periods!

Rest day today, last day tomorrow...

Smokin' Sunset!

Good termals!

See!

Air Sailing Day 2

Well today I think I posted my fastest ever task speed - 85mph or 138km/h. The task was an AAT down to Sweetwater then up to Flannigan. Another spectacular day where it was worth pushing hard to find only the very best thermals. There was also a lot of strong sink around and in hindsight I could have done better at avoiding that. The other key factor was the streeting - there was one very obvious street that ran to the south east of the first area. It worked great on the way south and even better on the way back. Just east of Reno at 14,000 I had a SouthWest Air jet descending into Reno fly straight over the top of me about 1000ft above. We were both in Class E but I'm sure he wouldn't have seen me. He certainly didn't mention it on the radio.

One complication in this comp is that the military has been blocking GPS signals at various times each day. Today I had a 40 minute gap in my trace and another of 10 minutes or so. Luckily the gaps were not in the AAT areas, but in transition between them or it could have been very expensive points-wise. Several people have had their start times estimated because they had no GPS coverage when they started.

I was originally planning to just nick the northern area because it looked completely dead, and I had the height to do so but would come in early. So I pushed in until I had 15:1 glide home and then turned. The final glide is complicated by the high terrain, so I actually had to slow down until about 12:1 to clear the mountain, then dive home as fast as I dared in the rough conditions. As soon as I pulled up over the finish line I was in about 6kts again and the clouds worked until about 8pm with spectacular wave setting up as well (see Dave's photo).

Evening wave bar at sunset

Air Sailing Competition Day 1 - Mommy I want my water back

Today was forecast to be blue in the task area, but they got that wrong. And I'm glad they did! A 3 hour MAT was set with only one turnpoint, then pick your own. Based on yesterday I was figuring it could be possible to do 90mph around the task so I set about 270 miles in the direction of the best forecast. Well the clouds started popping at about 20,000ft as we launched, but they were way off to the east. Fortunately that was the way I had planned on going. Climbs were small, punchy, and very strong with a lot of much weaker ones around. My best was a 15kt bottom-to-top with a peak of 28 knots. Insane! I'm flying the LS-8 dry because it's a Sports Class event, and boy I wish I didn't have to! These are by far the strongest conditions we have met all trip and the poor glider is being tossed around like a leaf. Also irritating is having to pull out of climbs at 17,500 to avoid bumping airspace. Some sympathy please, guys.

Looking east from 17,500 after leaving a 15kt thermal - share my pain!

Grand Teton & Yellowstone

Couple more pics from the trip over from the East. Allan is out on task about level with  Lake Tahoe at present.

The colour picture is taken in the vicinity of Old Faithful Geyser. The B&W is Grand Tetons.