HIGHLIGHTS:
 

1. Well, it was likely someone would land out during the day. It just happened to be the very last flight of the day, and Jerry Badal got the honors. The wind was strong all day, averaging 14 knots with gusts up to 20 knots. Most of it right down the runway, perhaps a bit of a right crosswind. My students all took only one flight to see what could happen in that kind of wind. The tow, especially below 200 agl, was very turbulent. Even off tow, the strong wind made for some dicey situations aloft. The wonderful part of Avenal is that not making it back to the gliderport carries with it almost no penalty in terms of scratched gliders or bruised bodies. Instead it teaches a great lesson better than hours of warnings from a Flight Instructor. Usually one learns the lesson quickly, far more quickly than during a training lesson. In this case, it took a bit of hard work from a whole lot of people to get the glider back onto the field, but other than that, a lesson well learned.

2. Norm Lambert was out here today and because of the strong wind and difficulty in controlling a glider on tow, once was enough to get the idea of what effect such a "breeze" can have on glider flight.

3. Julie Butler also took one flight, learned a lot, hung onto the tow as best she could and when back on the ground, agreed that it was a day when even a licensed pilot might opt to come back another day.

4. Daniel Solis was here for training as well. He, too, took one flight and learned how interesting it can be both on tow and on landing. The real lesson came not from their Flight Instructor, but from watching Jerry Badal land in the soft dirt in late afternoon. And, with the exception of Norm Lambert, all the rest of the pilots here today were involved in the retrieval of the glider. That alone is worth it's weight in Flight Instructing. I couldn't have shown it better myself.

5. One of the valuable exercises I like to ask students to do when the wind is that strong is what I call Flightless Wing Leveling. It means that you get in the glider that is parked on the runway and by virtue of the strong wind, you can actually raise the wings to level position and try to keep them there with stick movement only. It sounds easy but if one tries to look at each wing to accomplish it, that won't work. One must use the pitot tube on the nose of the glider to determine wings level, and that's valuable because in flight one must use that same clue. So it's a great way to practice level flight without paying for either a tow fee or a Flight Instructor's fees.

6. Doug Staudmeister opted to fly the 1-26 in these strong winds and when he found out what it was like, he parked the glider after only one flight that he described as quite turbulent and difficult to control both on and off tow. Nice lesson learned for Doug and for everyone else.

7. Morgan Hall came out today with Julie planning to fly the 1-26 but decided not to try it today. I thought his decision was most thoughtful and correct given the conditions and his time in that glider. That's the mark of a careful pilot. Remember, not only do we preflight our gliders but we must also PREFLIGHT OURSELVES. That's what Morgan did and set a great example for all the other students on the field today.

8. Actually, Jerry Badal's landout flight wasn't his first of the day. He took his brother Dave for a flight in the Orange Crush and in spite of what we thought might be a bad day for soaring, got into some sort of "thermal" or shear line, and stayed aloft for an hour at altitudes upwards of 6000 msl. We're still not sure what caused the lift since the upper air was quite strong and surely would have erased any form of thermal. A shear line still is a possibility.