Saturday, May 9, 2009
up

Grant Smith, an instructor for the Puget Sound Soaring Association (a sailplane club), invites me down to Bergseth field. At his suggestion, my first flight is 15 minutes of landing practice, getting used to the airport's location against the foothills and perched on the edge of a 400' bluff. (That bluff is actually your friend: if you blow it and come in too low, instead of trees you get a minute to plan again, and then your choice of cow pastures below.)

After that, he suggests I go back up and either tour the Enumclaw valley, or check out the ridge line before the sailplanes get towed up in great numbers. I fly up to the ridge, and find that there's a little bit of west wind beginning to pick up, and every so often there's enough lift to keep me up. I reduce throttle bit by bit, until eventually I've got it at "idle" most of the time, and still I'm managing to stay up along the ridge. It doesn't exactly count, because my 2-stroke engine idles pretty high to stay smooth, and because the engine's always there; when I slip off the hill a little bit, I nurse in a little throttle with my toe, and crawl a bit back up the hillside. Early in the flight Grant gets towed up with a student, and shows up on the ridge; I get some early practice keeping my eyes open and passing carefully.

I see Grant go land, so I go land. Counting pattern practice, I've flown two hours so far, and I've only used half a tank. (In Toledo, I was getting about 1:40 on a tank with a half-gallon reserve.) Whee! Grant mentions that he saw my prop spinning around the whole time, hint hint, nudge nudge. He says I should stay and hang out a little longer, try the ridge out some more. The day is warming up, and the morning east wind is growing back into a west wind, needed to drive the ridge lift.

I pull the fuel tank, carry it back to the car, and pour in a measly gallon and a half. I strap it back in, put on the headset, and say tally-ho to the sailplane pilots standing around chatting (waiting their turn for the club planes). I fire up the engine, take the runway, and climb out. The airport is at 1000', the ridge line peaks at about 3000'. I climb for seven minutes until I reach the ridge at about 2700' (about 300' below the ridge). I immediately feel a bump, check the VSI on the GPS, and see that I'm climbing at 1000 fpm (feet per minute, much better than the engine can do) -- I'm back in the lift.

This is it. Time to try this soaring thing out for real. I'm 1600' over the airport, and only a mile or so away. I reach down and flip off the toggle switch, and the engine turns two more times and stops, like it has so many times before (on the runway). I'm a little anxious -- I'm now committed, in a sense. Not really, because the engine was always optional to begin with, but there's a certain vague sense of finality in turning off the engine while you're flying.

I fly along the ridge, and the glider bumps up and down, and the VSI flickers down 200 fpm, then up 300, then level. I fly for another half a minute, and I'm at 2800. I have just turned the engine off, and I'm going up!

I continue flying down the ridge, then back up. The ridgeline has a peak near the north end, and some ravines that funnel the wind up into bigger blasts of air; after a few round trips, I start to get familiar with these blasts, and expect them. I begin to judge my altitude change by my relative motion against the trees on the hillside -- now up a little (whee!), now down a little (now I know where "sinking feeling" comes from). I'm always parallel to the hill, staying close to get the lift, but always ready to bump out to the west in case the lift doesn't work out like it should.

There are sailplanes visiting the same ridge, and I'm constantly craning my neck to be sure I see them. Every so often, I'm looking back over my shoulder, and I see the warm tones of my laminated propeller. MY PROPELLER! There it is, just sitting there. I've been flying for fifteen minutes without it turning, and I haven't had to land! The engine is off, and I'm GOING UP!

After several more passes along the ridge, I start to get comfortable with its pattern -- the sinky hole, and the big blasty spots, and the little knoll at the south end that always gives me a reliable couple hundred feet. Slowly, I realize that I'm no longer just expecting to slip down the hillside: I'm 150' below the trees at the peak, but now I know I'm about to hit one of the blasty spots, and I know that by the time I get to the peak, I'll be flying *over* it. Sure enough, I ride up the air escalator, the trees drop away beside me, and now I'm looking down on the forest. Wait, how's that again? I was below the trees, my motor is off, and yet I knew I could fly up and over them. I'm a bird!

[Safety note: no, I'm never actually committed to flying over those trees; I mean "over" in the sense that I'm looking down at them. If I don't go up, I just go past them west of the ridge. When I do go up enough, sometimes I'll slide in a little over the treetops, but I've always got the escape away from the ridge.]

I'm getting familiar with the terrain. Here there's a patch of new tree growth. There, on the peak, there are a handful of big sun-bleached deciduous snags mixed in with the firs. On the northeast side of the ridge, there are still patches of snow.

I make another pass south, and see a bird headed my way. He's not flapping; ah, he's a hawk, soaring too! I turn around to follow him (he probably knows what he's doing), and I'm 20' away from him. I can see the individual feathers on the tips of his wings. I yell at him "hey, look at me, I'm a bird, too!" I lose track of him pretty quickly; he's much better at this than I am.

Up until now, I've been up to 3100' (just over the ridge) and down to 2700'. A few turns more, and I think I wander into some thermal activity on the south end, and I'm climbing climbing climbing. 3300! 3400! 3450! Come on, come on! 3499! The GPS flicks to 3500 and then right back to 3499. 3500 feet! I'm 500' OVER the ridge! I haven't had the engine on for an hour, and I'm 800 feet higher than where I turned it off!

The random rewards are a little intoxicating. One pass works poorly, and I slip down to 2800 again, then I turn around, and hit the spots right again (or maybe the wind is back again), and whoosh! back up to 2950. It's like a casino -- just hang in there a little longer, and maybe you'll hit the big one again. You end up at the north end a little low, and think maybe it's time to quit, and you get a little reward, and think maybe you should stay for the jackpot. I gotta get me some more of that lift!

At one point, I sink down to my 2600' "floor" -- time to engine up or turn back to the airstrip. I turn away from the ridge, push the starter (woo woo -- gasp), squirt the primer a couple times, and then it starts right up. Well, no point in stopping now! At 2500', I turn back to the ridge. I reach the ridge at 2700', and immediately hit a blast of lift. By the time I turn off the motor, I'm all the way back up to 2850, and I've run the motor less than a minute. I stay on the ridge another twenty minutes.

In Toledo, I was watching my clock carefully, to be sure I prepared to land before burning through my 1:40 of fuel. But this is no longer a problem -- I've run the engine for eight minutes on this tank! I'm at 3000', no aeronautical reason to leave, but it's almost 4PM; I need to get ready to go home. I turn toward the airport. I know it should be an easy glide, but I've never really tried it before, and with the engine really off (and not idling high), there's a new level of commitment. Should I turn the engine on?

Well, I'm halfway there already, and I'm still over 2800', and I'm not even really sinking -- there's lift out here, too, right now. I turn a couple circles to lose altitude. I crawl closer, take a look at the windsock. If I have to land west (the downhill way), I'll use the engine -- but nope, the wind is calm, so I can land east, and I've got the "escape bluff", so I'm going to try the no-engine landing, too. I set up an approach quite high (just to be sure), and sure enough, I'm a couple hundred feet high. I turn another 360 to lose altitude, and now the approach looks right. I land as gracefully as ever. Then I reach down, prime the engine, start it up, and use it to taxi back to the grass ramp.

I take the trike apart, and pull out my fuel tank -- still pretty much full. I've been up for an hour and a half, and I ran the engine less than ten minutes. One time was to taxi. With the engine off, the wood grain on the propeller plain to see, I can point towards trees above me and soar over them.

Soaring is amazing.