Green Swamp Final

 It’s Sunday, the Green Swamp Sport Klassic is over and our bodies are feeling it today.

We had the first day of the comp turn out to be awesome but the following three days were blown out. I remained in 13^th place.

Thursday, they held Task 2. It was a questionable day with low TOL and high winds. I was extremely apprehensive about flying and under normal conditions I wouldn’t even get my glider off the truck. I was set up, but my glider stayed right next to the camper under the trees on the tie down. Anyone who has flown with me knows how much of a weenie I am when it comes to flying in high winds. It’s not fun when you’re hooking in below minimum weight, turning my glider is like trying to turn the Titanic. Myself and about 20 other pilots took a ‘DNF’ and 0 points for the day, which I was totally fine with. It bumped me down to 19^th place, but the points awarded that day were peanuts anyways due to the amount of people who didn’t fly or go anywhere if they did.

 

Morningside South

 

Task 3 was Task 1: Part 2. Another Southern flight to tag the rotary waypoint then East to Wallaby. I was flying today, the winds had calmed down but it was a totally blue day with another 3,500 TOL. (Not much when you’re used to New England’s 10,000ft Springtime ceilings. I just wanted one day at goal, but it was going to be tough. Our mentor was Dave Lopez on his T2C. The teams had also been whittled down and the A-Team now only consisted of Max, Ilya, and myself. Dana and Asel got split onto a new team since we had a couple more mentors.

We all towed up and Ilya and Max caught the first train out in a large gaggle, and it wasn’t until we were in the air that we realized our mentor’s PTT keyed on and none of us were able to communicate. The drift was strong and I was only around 1,600ft. I didn’t want to risk leaving and sinking. At least if you make it back to Quest you can get a re-light and try again. So, I bobbled around, climbed out with the second group, and gave chase. We had issues with our gaggle though, nobody up top wanted to push out front. So, a few times in a row I was the schmuck that topped out and lead out to hunt around along with another guy in a red Sport2 with white racing stripes. We fanned out and hunted around and it worked for a decent distance. I started catching up to Max and Ilya, I could see the red and green dots about a mile ahead. I got over the same field that I had landed in on the first Task (the attack-cows), and there’s only a couple of landing options. I was low and needed to get higher to make the jump over the trees to the next decent field near the road. Landing in Bronson’s ranch was not an option to me. Unless you like having your life threatened by ranch hands and hiking 100+lbs of gear for hours through pastures. There is no access into the acres of cow fields. I lost my climb and was getting low, about 1,000ft. A guy named Chris had landed there a few moments before in a Sting, and I didn’t want to deck it. I struggled on the tree line down to about 300ft, vultures came out and started circling but by the time I got over to them I was about 150ft up and the drift would’ve taken me over the trees. It wasn’t worth it and I landed… in the same damn field. It was windy and I ended up having a two-step moon-walk landing. At least I was familiar with the terrain and cows at that point. They didn’t even venture over the hill to look at me this time. Ilya and Max landed not long after I did, a little further down the course.

Breaking down in Bronson's field

 

Distance: 21.34 km
Time: 1h 31m
Place: 13th

 

Task 4 – The last day. The wind had switched 180º for the day and we had a new task, so everyone was amped to go North instead of South. New terrain! It was another blue day but the TOL was predicted around 5,000. Our mentor for the day was Pete Lehmann, and he ended up being a super cool dude. We were the last team to launch so we got into the later part of the day, but it worked out because the ceiling had lifted a bit and we had what Lanning calls ‘confetti’ (other pilots) on the course to help mark the thermals out We had been first every day of the comp. Our mentor launched first, then myself, Ilya, and Max. Again, we had issues with comms. We couldn’t hear Ilya or our mentor, so Max and I were the only two that could communicate and we ended up being split up. I caught a climb out with a gaggle, topped out and was being attacked by an immature bald eagle at the top of the stack along with another poor dude in a red and yellow Gecko. I saw him rolling with the claws out about 100ft away from me so I beat feet and went on glide towards the north. And I got HAMMERED. It was a slow, sad descent. I had spoken to another pilot, Rich, before the flight and he mentioned that there were aluminum chicken coops off to the NW that were really good thermal generators. Remembering that, I made a dash for them and got there at 1,000ft. And thankfully, the advice and chickens paid off. I had a 3,000ft climb out and was back up over 4,000ft. I left and went back on course. The first turnpoint was 34.9 km to Colman, and goal was 62.5km from start.

I was reading off my distance from the cylinder back and forth with Max, 22k.. 17k.. 10k.. and I finally heard the happiest beeps ever from the 6030, I had tagged the waypoint. But I was  now down around 2,000ft and needed a climb out. I saw a glider below that had landed in the dirt of the mines and I didn't care to give them any company. So, very slowly, I had clawed my way back up and it cost me time. Max ended up catching up from a couple of miles behind and blowing right past me while I was circling trying to get back up. Ilya was not far behind me either, I could see him the next gaggle back but he said he never spotted me. My mentor was climbing with me, and afterwards said he caught a climb not even 500ft from where I was and was about 2k over me while I was struggling. I lost him and thought he had left, I didn’t even see him above and we had no communication. Damn.

I ventured off alone, and went on glide up the highway and over the retirement city, The Villages. There’s golf courses mixed in there but I wasn’t keen on shooting into one of those when there were larger fields off to the West, and not very far off course. I was only 18k from goal. I flew over a few downed gliders here and there, one was behind a Lowes in a large field that I ended up getting stuck and circling over. I kept saying aloud ‘I am NOT landing with you'. The mantra worked and I got back up and moved on. But the day was getting late. Max was way ahead of me, Ilya had caught up and was about a mile to the East of me over the villages and neither of us realized it. He was with Zac Majors and Ken and they got better climbs over that way, he landed a couple miles further up the course than I did. I could see goal in the distance, I was on glide and getting low though. I picked out a small field with no fence and an access area. I scratched down to about 300ft, but the last tiny 20fpm of lift wasn’t big enough to get a full turn into. I accepted my fate and ended my flight with a perfect no-step landing. I was quickly followed by Matt Pruitt, who was tailing me.

It was the longest duration flight I’ve had since my shoulder surgery, and it was sore but it held up a lot better than I thought. I got to thermal around that day with Zac Majors, Christian Ciech, Mick, and Pete Lehmann too. So, it was a pretty incredible day.

Distance: 44.42 km
Time: 2h 30m
Place: 11^th

 

A-Team 3D flight track - Doarama

Max made goal
Ilya got 48.91km  
Bill Gottling had a personal best of 42.46 km
Nick finally got out of the field in his T2C and put some miles in
Asel had his second-ever XC
And poor Dana didn’t fly. His rental glider was a total disaster and he was grounded all week.

 

A-Team final results out of 54 competitors-

Max: 1^st place
Ilya: 9^th place
Crystal: 13^th place (1st women's)

GSSK Day 1

Well, we finally made it to Florida!

We got slammed the day we were supposed to leave with 18" of heavy, white, cold, disgusting snow and single digit temperatures. Two days and about 24 hours of driving, and we made it to Quest!

10 hours of shoveling and heat gunning, finally leaving..

The first day we were there we all decided to take a tow up and do some flying- after no airtime for 5 months. I took the first tow up in front of Ilya and Max, got about 40 minutes of thermaling, my shoulder had enough and I landed. Max and Ilya got about 1:20+ a piece. It was a fun day. I only took that one flight and decided to give my shoulder a break before the first task.

Day 1 of the GSSK 2018 was a 39.8km task South down 33 x-wind to the first turnpoint, then  to goal at Wallaby. Our team mentor was Christian Ciech, and he's a hard man to keep up with. Even in a kingposted Orbiter. We lined up to launch - Christian, Ilya, Max, Crystal, and Asel. Dana wasn't able to fly due to issues with his rental U2.

Left line - Day 1



Ilya on tow, Task 1

Ilya and Christian got to base fairly quickly, Max and Asel weren't able to stay up and went back for re-lights. I got down around 1,000ft and the scratching was well underway. My biggest motivation: not landing in mid-day conditions in a field in front of 100+ people. If you've ever seen an albatross land, that's about what I look like when it's buoyant..

A turkey vulture saved my skin and marked a thermal for me. It went from about 150fpm and turned into a consistent 900fpm all the way to 3,700ft and past several other competitors. Christian and Ilya began their run to the South for the first turn point, and I gave chase and ended up catching up with them a short time later. We were battling a strong cross wind. Early on we were watching people landing left and right. About 10km into it we ended up passing Bill Gottling, flew with him for awhile, and moved on. He said he stopped to do a bit more climbing in a thermal and by the time he decided to continue on course we were gone and he couldn't find another climb after.



Task 1 - Crystal and Ilya

We had thermals here and there. It was strange, with some lift being scratchy and others being bullets. About 20km into it we were getting blown downwind and off the course. Christian was a ways ahead of and a bit above Ilya and I and we were on our own at that point and down to about 2,600ft. We weren't finding anything, and ended up leaving a scrappy 50fpm thermal to head upwind for stronger lift near where our mentor was. By the time we got there, it was gone. We went back for the lift we flew through, and that was gone. Then the flush began. We scratched and hunted, and hoped for a trigger off the highway or fields underneath us but nothing lifted off for us. A short time later we were on the ground. We landed in a cow field near a gate and road. From the air we only saw about a half dozen cows, as we were walking towards the highway and gate I looked back to the hill and there was about 50 cows... RUNNING down the hill towards us. Visions of Tom Lanning's encounter with them licking and trampling his glider were flashing. I radioed to Ilya and we made a run for the road. We got out of our harnesses and threw those and our fully assembled gliders over the fence before they could get to us and trample our gear. It was like the walking dead, but with beef..

As we were breaking down, I looked up and saw about a half dozen gliders flying over using the thermal that we and the cow stampede had probably triggered off. And amongst them was Max in his green machine flying over us. He could see our big shimmering tears from 3,500ft. He ended up catching up with Christian and making goal. The only Sport 2 to do so that day!

It was a fun time, good experience. And the best things of that day were I got my mid-day tow, mid-day landing, and XC flight in (haven't since 2016). My shoulder also held out a lot better than anticipated, the glides in between the thermals helped give it a break.

Total time in the air 1:10

Distance: 21.86km

Tied for 13th place with Ilya, and the furthest non-goal Sport2s for this task.
Task 1 Results

Task 2 has been called off due to thunderstorms and high winds..

The A-Team

We're all counting down the days - the Green Swamp is coming and the teams have been chosen! Morningside Flight Park proudly introduces...

THE A-TEAM

Ilya Rivkin
 as John 'Hannibal' Smith, team leader whose flight plans tend to be unorthodox but incredibly effective.

Crystal Wolfe 
as Templeton 'Faceman' Peck, the smooth-talking con woman who serves as the team's appropriator of aircrafts and weapons.

 

Max Kotchouro
 as H.M. "Howlin' Mad" Murdock, veteran declared insane but can fly any kind of aircraft he touches with extreme precision.

 

 

Mike Asel 
as B.A. Baracus: the team's strong man, glider mechanic, and Sergeant First Class.

Dana Harris

as... the stunt dude

___________________________

And on separate teams :

Nick Caci
as Colonel Lynch, Commander of Fort Bragg from which the A-Team escaped, and who has been in constant pursuit of them.

Bill Gottling
as Decker, the second Colonel who has also tried to catch the team unsuccessfully.

Bwuahaha! Now lets get out there and have some fun!