Flights of Summer

In August 1996 I was looking for a hard-to-find bird, a 2-seat motorglider that I might afford. When one appeared in Trade-a-Plane, I jumped to the phone and pretty soon had made a deal, sight unseen [poor judgment ? Well, it worked out for me in this case]. The aircraft is in Iowa, I’m in Long Beach CA and summer is passing fast. I got most of the last week of August off work and found my way to NW Iowa, where I was picked up by Dennis, the seller, and given a Navion ride into his farm. I say “into” because his strip is about 1500 feet long, just wide enough to turn at the end, and surrounded by corn taller than the airplane. That was a memorable ride in itself. In the evening we went over the logbooks and operating handbook.

Next morning we went to the airport where N11JL was kept. She is a Slingsby T-61A, the only one on the FAA registry [although there are a couple of similar Scheibe SF-25s as well]. She is a side-by-side 2-seat taildragger with single mainwheel and training wheels on the wings, 50 feet wingspan, 40HP VW conversion, no electrics, Experimental-Exhibition. Dennis and I inspected her, wound up the motor and flew for an hour or so to get the feel of the airplane, practice in-flight shutdowns and restarts, a few patterns, and a climb to 9000 feet at max gross - I knew I had some hills to cross on the way home ! Then we shook hands, I stowed my cross-country gear in the right seat, topped off the tank with 3 gallons, and set off for California in beautiful warm sunshine. At a cruise speed of 60 knots and a comfortable endurance of 2.5 hours, I reckoned I was looking at 10 legs of about 150 nm each. But after 90 minutes or so on the first leg, over some Nebraska badlands, I started to lose rpm. Uh-oh. I opened the throttle to full, no extra rpm but it ran rougher so I came back to a smooth power setting and started following section roads instead of flying direct. After a while I was down to about 1200 feet, and there was a classic farm and field with haystacks and no livestock below me, so I landed. Opened the cowling, engine looks just fine but the air cleaner is pretty cool and damp. The engine has no carb heat, it relies on the warmth of cylinder #1 below the air cleaner, and it had been running cool as I loafed along. Lesson learnt - run this engine hot. A very friendly farmer, name of Steve, showed up with his dogs and we talked for a while. Steve saved me from pacing out the field by telling me how long it was - 80 rods ! After a while I fessed up that I wasn’t real sure how much a rod was worth nowadays, and he told me it’s still 16 and a half feet. So I taxied all the way back, chose a line into wind between the haystacks and towards a low section of fence with no trees, and got back on my way. Thankyou, Steve. A ten-minute flight to O’Neill was followed by a 15-minute taxi and 10 minutes more to fill up with 4.5 gallons. Along the way I found my taxi times were enormous [those big airfields with long wide runways] and refuelling was always a joke - “Fill ‘er up, she’ll take about 4 gallons !” always started a conversation, and the FBO people and local airport bums just loved to watch this strange bird waddle in and out. Next stop was North Platte for the night, and at dawn next day I found a gleaming red MiG-17 parked next to me - somebody else having fun with an impractical airplane. Out of North Platte I came across the only dull weather of the trip, low stratus blowing from the south. I stayed below it, refuelled at Sidney and then decided to put down at Kimball NE to wait the weather out - I was only 50 miles from Cheyenne, but the ground was rising and the cloudbase wasn’t. After 3 or 4 hours Cheyenne admitted to being VFR [barely] so I made a dash for it [70 kts !] under the stratus. Cheyenne was in a beautiful blue hole, solid VFR, but just to the west there was an enormous cu-nim, its top was somewhere in heaven and it was clearly hell underneath. I landed, refuelled, got space in a hangar and then watched the biggest thunder and lightning and hailstorm I’ve seen in quite a few years.

Cheyenne at dawn was solid blue again, but Laramie was in fog. The first commuter pilot to arrive gave me the real weather, so I launched and sure enough the fog burned off each ridgeline about ten miles ahead of me. Coming into the pattern, I got engine roughness again [hey, I can’t descend at full power] which I decided to ignore. Then just as I rounded out to land the engine cleared its throat and gave me a burst of power. Now the T61 has throttle on my right, stick in the center and spoilers on the left, so at this time I have to release the spoilers, change hands on the stick and then grab the throttle. Not a pretty landing after that wardance, but at least I taxied away from it. Cowboy Aviation is the FBO there, and they show real Western hospitality.

From Laramie, follow the highway to Medicine Hat and on to Rawlins WY for fuel. Takeoff from Rawlins in the early afternoon was at a density altitude of 9700 feet. The long runway was not a problem but rising ground and houses plus some sink made for a long and detailed look at the grass until I could make a very shallow turn back to the valley. Then on to Rock Springs, where the airport is very hard to find unless you know it is on top of the hill - I had already descended and it didn’t seem natural to look upwards for a runway. Also, airfields on hilltops in the mountains have really vicious crosswinds - for a low speed airplane, a set of three 2000 ft runways would be much nicer than a single 6000 ft across the wind. Then on to Evanston WY for the night, another hilltop airfield and another ultra-hospitable FBO.

Out of Evanston at dawn, heading for Provo UT. Salt Lake City class C is verboten without atransponder, but as a glider I can go over the top, round the edge, or underneath the bottom. I do a bit of all three, follow the Heber valley, come over the pass at 12500 feet level with the mountain tops and drop into Provo - a very slow, very steep drop with lots of circling to get down. From Provo, on to Fillmore UT, Cedar City, and Mesquite NV. At Mesquite I found each wingtip was dragging the ground while I taxied - it turned out that my nylon outrigger legs had turned to wet noodles in the heat, shade temperature being 126 degrees. Deciding that takeoff was out of the question in that heat, I stayed the night along with the 14 LongEZ crews who had come to race.

Dawn at Mesquite gave only 92 degrees, no wind, but early departures and arrivals choosing runway direction at random. I was glad to leave. Skirting the Las Vegas airspace, I refuelled at Boulder City NV and headed on to Daggett. Daggett was hot and very windy, the landing and takeoff were not problems but crosswind taxiing was a bear - the FBO operator was really kind and walked my wing out to the runway. On the home stretch now, I cruised south of Joshua and direct to Tehachapi. There were such strong thermals over the desert that at times I was diving at 80 knots [wow !] and still climbing 2000 ft/min. I landed at Tehachapi on Labor Day at noon, right in the middle of the Sailplane Homebuilders and Vintage Sailplane Associations’ meet. I enjoyed the BBQ, talked with Irv Culver and listened to Paul McCready - life is sweet.

Take a small aircraft, a slow aircraft, a fairly old aircraft. Fly 1400 miles across farmland, mountains and desert. Enjoy four days, 34 hours flying, 17 landings and immense satisfaction. This is sport aviation at its best, in a touring motorglider.