Saturday, July 4, 2009
up

I set up at Sunnyside, Washington, a paved strip in the Yakima Valley. The day is hot (at 10am, already in the 80s) and still, a clear blue sky. I wanted to test out my 5-gallon fuel tank arrangement today, but the expansion pressure vent I put in turned out to be poorly placed, and tended to eject a fuel geyser when agitated. So back to the 3-gallon tank for today.

My tentative plan: take a warm-up trip, then refuel and try to meet Doug in Richland -- I'd have him bring me a couple gallons to refill for the return trip. The warm-up trip included a practice landing at Sunnyside, a liesurely trip at 1000-1500' above ground across the vally to Prosser's paved airport (12 mi southeast), a landing there, and a liesurely trip back. Along the way, I looked around for emergency landing options, and noted that an awful lot of roads have power lines next to them.

I refueled back at Sunnyside. I called Doug, but didn't get an answer. I decided that I could head southeast again, and check the phone in the air. It was very warm already, still getting hotter, I hadn't been much over a thousand feet up, and the flight suit, wool socks, and scarf were starting to feel pretty crowded. I decided I'd just fly this next flight in shorts and shirtsleeves, and stripped off all the cold-weather gear.

Now I often explain, when people look at the trike and its very simple, very unredundant engine, that you shouldn't think of this device as an airplane with a reliable engine, but as a hang glider with an engine for convenient launching. If the engine betrays you, well, it's great at short field landings; just put it down almost anywhere and retrieve it with the truck. That's the theory -- but so far, I've never landed anywhere but runways. I've been to a few turf runways, but I've never actually practiced off-field landings.

So I decided that, on this trip, I'd try to get in some practice off-field. For an engine-out, just about any spot will do. But for practice, I'd rather not need to write a check to the farmer for the wheat I tore up, or to Northwing for the trike I banged up. Ideally, in fact, I'd like to just take off again and practice some more.

Much of the valley was green with some crop or another. On the edges of the valley, where the terrain sloped upwards enough to foil irrigation, there were wheat fields; not long after that, there was open range. Much of the range was covered in scrub brush and tumbleweed. I found a section with no brush, just open beige field. It sloped up a little to the north, so I approached for an uphill landing. (The deal with an uphill landing is that it's easier, since gravity stops the trike, but you're more committed, since if you try to go around, you now have to outclimb the terrain.)

I flew down low, and once I was about 10 feet away and sinking, I could make out the ground texture a little better: the beige was short stubbly grass (no problem) dotted with jagged 3-inch rocks. I powered up, touched the wheels briefly, and went around. I decided that the rocks were spaced out enough to warrant a landing, so I came back around and did a proper landing, then took off again. Yahoo! My first off-airport landing, and it was no big deal. I think those sharp rocks might cost me a tire once in twenty landings, but for an engine-out, no problem.

A couple miles later, I spotted a straight gravel road. There were power lines on one part, but they stopped, leaving the only obstacles a low livestock fence on each side (that the wings could clear) and a yellow diamond road sign (that they could not). I set up an approach to float in over the road sign and land on the slight uphill. That worked wonderfully, even with a gentle crosswind. I taxied up the road, did a K-turn in the narrow space by pushing the trike around like Fred Flintstone, and took off back down the hill.

Satisfied that I could spot terrain and turn it into an impromptu airport, I turned south and headed for a 2000' ridgeline (1300' above the valley) south of the valley. I crossed the ridge a few hundred feet over, and right away started getting a little climb. Once I reached 3000', I shut down the engine. The dust on the field a half mile east of me was being gently disturbed; I told myself that if the present lift held until 4000, I'd go explore that other lift. Not long after that, the altimeter reported 4600. I continued east, and the lift just kept cranking, 1000-2000 feet per minute -- that's 11-22 miles per hour, UP!

The thermal must have been big, because I have no thermalling skills whatsoever, and yet I didn't fall out of it. Up, up, up -- now 6000, now 7000, now 8000 feet! At seven thousand over the airport, that's 35 degrees cooler, or about 60 degrees ambient temperature and a wind speed of about 25 mph. In just a tee shirt, I was actually starting to get chilly! I told myself, very optimistically, that if I hit ten thousand, then I'd descend and go get my flight suit.

I didn't quite make 10,000, but I did manage to top out at 8660 MSL. Pretty amazing.

I looked back at Sunnyside, and it was way down there! An easy glide back. Instead of gliding, I searched around looking for the next thermal. Nothing materialized, and I slowly drained my supply of altitude, back down to 2500, just 500' over the plateau. I turned out into the valley, started up the engine, and pointed the plane towards Sunnyside.

Riding the big thermal, and searching for more thermals, I'd been carried downwind quite a ways; Sunnyside was now about 12 miles away. In fact, I was so far downwind that Prosser was now just off my right side, so close I could read the airport name painted on the ramp. The west wind had finally developed in earnest, so I was making only 18-20 knots over the ground, giving me an estimated time enroute of around 40 minutes. I knew I had about 30 minutes of fuel plus reserve in the tank, and my truck with full cans of pre-mixed fuel was waiting for me back at Sunnyside. But there was Prosser, a whole airport, just waiting for me. But then I'd have to tie the plane down, carry the tank to the gas station in the heat, ... what a hassle. But there was Prosser. An airport. Right there. I was moving so slowly that I had minutes to vascillate, and Prosser didn't really make much progress past me; I wonder if I had continued vascillating until the fuel ran out, I might have still been in gliding distance of Prosser.

Anyway, good judgement finally won out, and I turned right, flew over Prosser, reconnoitered the Shell station (half mile north of the airport), and landed, taxied, and tied down. That was a fun act -- trying to keep the wind from rolling the trike while I got my ropes out of the zippered bag, and then keeping it from rolling around me while I tied down one wing... Note to self: bring wheel chocks next time.

Bill, a mechanic just setting up shop in Prosser, offered me a ride over to the Shell station; it was nice to avoid the walk in the hot air. He also pointed out the restaurant in the red barn on the north side of the airport fence; said it was good for the $100 hamburger. I'll have to keep that in mind.

Departing Prosser, I had a full tank again, so rather than head right back to Sunnyside, I climbed back up onto the ridge to look around for that tall thermal's brother. I never found it, but I did manage to squeeze in another gravel-road landing next to a wheat field. I didn't spend as long on the ridge (lest I be trapped again in Prosser).

On the slow flight over the valley to Sunnyside, I thought, "hmm, my legs feel warm." Uh oh -- you know that if you can feel the sunburn while it's happening, it's a bad burn. I ended up spending about four hours in shorts, and came home looking like a lobster. Ow. Note to self: bring sunscreen next time.

Besides the 5-gallon tank, the other equipment I wanted to test was the SPOT satellite messenger. It's a little box with a GPS that blind-transmits its location back up to a satellite-phone network every ten minutes. It gets crummy reviews from hikers and cyclists; apparently its GPS does poorly with even mild obstruction. But mounted on the back of a flying machine is about the best place you can put a satellite transceiver, so I did a test run with a borrowed unit. It performed acceptably, successfully transmitting about 5 out of 6 messages each hour. So I'll be rigging that up to communicate with Chase on the Portland trip, as part of our elaborate scheme for staying in touch via a rendundant array of radio technologies.

In summary, Saturday's flight was pretty fantastic. Two big firsts for me: several off-airport landings, and my first thermal was an amazing ride to eight thousand feet. Whee!