First Solo Cross Country Wave Flight

Though far less spectacular than the epic wave flights I recently shared with Kempton Izuno (Extreme Wave Flight in FNX, and Wave Flight to the Pacific Ocean), I experienced my first solo cross country wave flight on Monday, December 2!

After those two incredible flights, I was eager to put what I had learned into practice. So I started watching the forecast winds aloft charts, and on Thanksgiving eve it appeared to me that the winds might be favorable for a wave flight on Monday, December 2. By Friday night, the RASP BLIPMAPs (a regional soaring forecast) were supporting my theory so I reserved Williams Soaring Center's ASW-24 for the day.

I set a very modest goal (by Kempton standards) to get in the wave near Goat Mountain and run as far north as Alder Springs' latitude and yo-yo between the two points and see how many "laps" I could do. Well, the answer ended up being just one!

I took off at 11:30 and towed west towards the mountains fully expecting to encounter wave on the way out. But the only lift we encountered during the tow was right near the airport just after taking off! The tow pilot took me to an area between Goat Mountain and Snow Mountain. I got off tow and started searching for the wave. After searching for almost ten minutes and thinking I might have to return, I finally connected with weak lift near Goat Mountain at about 8,500'. After mapping the area I started my initial climb.

The day started off void of any tell-tale lenticular clouds to help find the lift. This photo is looking to the north as I neared the top of my initial climb. The eastern half of Snow Mountain is on the left and Saint John's Mountain is in the center of the photo. You can also see the cloud deck of the approaching storm in the distance. (Wind is L to R)

The ClearNav display shows my initial search efforts and the small area I was working (the green tracks are in lift and the black tracks are in sink). The straight green track above my current position was while I was still on tow and I released where the track makes a 90 degree turn to the right. The black line that extends from the glider to the lower right of the display depicts the path back to Williams.

I climbed to 14,800' and then departed to the north. I went to Snow Mountain and attempted to find lift in an area relative to where I had found the lift at Goat Mountain, to no avail. Then I noticed that a well defined lenticular cloud had formed to the northeast of Saint John's Mountain and headed for it.

I entered the lift at about 11,000' and by the time I had climbed back up to about 14,000' I started north to my goal of Alder Springs.

This is looking north. You can see that the cloud deck had advanced, bringing moisture into the area which allowed the formation of the lenticular cloud at my "gas station". (Wind is L to R)

This is looking back to the the area of my initial climb. You can see: 1-Goat Mountain, 2-Clear Lake, 3-Mount Konocti, and 4-the Pacific Ocean.

This is essentially the same picture taken later in the flight during my third climb in the same area. I like the starburst effect of the sun reflecting on the canopy!

The lift continued as far north as Sheet Iron Mountain and then became not so insignificant sink! I had got as high as 15,500' when I encountered the sink, so I continued north thinking I might reconnect with the wave. I stopped my northbound progress when I got down to 13,000' and returned to the last known area of lift. I hadn't quite made it as far north as Alder Springs.

When I turned back to return to the gas station, I could see that classic lenticulars had developed high in the valley to the south of me. I did not consider trying for them as they seemed far away and I had not yet achieved my northbound goal. (Wind is R to L)

The combination of a cap cloud and lenticular clouds that were forming at Hull Mountain were quite interesting. They grew, evolved, and merged into a giant blob of cloud that completely obscured Hull Mountain. In my mind I was referring to it as Cloud Mountain. These shots were taken on my return to the gas station and during my second climb. All are looking into the wind.

When I got back to the gas station, I decided that I would climb higher before attempting another northbound run. Here is my ClearNav display during the second climb. You can see that my first northbound track was all in black after passing Sheet Iron Mountain. You can also see the the winds in the lower left corner showing 302 degrees at 60 knots! At one point during this climb, the entire view on the ClearNav display flipped 180 degrees as though I had turned around, even though I had not! I quickly realized that this had happened because I was being blown backwards over the ground. I pushed the stick forward to speed up and the display instantaneously flipped back to the "proper" orientation.

I climbed to 17,000' before beginning my second attempt to get as far north as Alder Springs. I decided to try a path more upwind this time in the hope that I would find a solid line of lift all the way to Alder Springs.

As I began north, Cloud Mountain had taken on a sort of a wind-swept, marshmallowy, cream puffy appearance. It reminded my of something that you might see in an advertisement for an air conditioning company or an ice company!

The sink I encountered on my second northbound attempt was even stronger than on the first attempt. So I aborted it earlier so I could return to the gas station and climb back up to 17,000' quicker. I had decided that I would try one more attempt to reach my northern goal and that this third and final attempt would now be downwind of my original attempt.

As I climbed and began my final northbound attempt, a lenticular cloud formed above Cloud Mountain as though Cloud Mountain was itself a physical, solid mountain.

I finally had success! I had gone north as far as Alder Springs and a little farther. I still did not find a solid lift line north of Sheet Iron Mountain, but I did encounter less sink on my final attempt. I decided I would go back and climb back to 17,000' before returning to Goat Mountain to complete lap #1. I also knew I would not be attempting a second lap as it was getting late in the day and the upwind runs and subsequent climbs were so time consuming.

Here the ClearNav shows that I'm heading back to the gas station and you can see all three of my attempts. The winds were now 300 degrees at 64 knots. Just like on my first flight with Kempton, the farther north I was, the higher the wind speed was. The highest I saw during the day was 70 knots. It appears that I am flying straight to the gas station with the nose pointed directly at it. But in actuality, I was crabbing into the wind almost 90 degrees!

As I climbed back up to 17,000' something interesting was happening to Cloud Mountain. It was flattening out. As though someone had took a pin to a balloon, Cloud Mountain was settling down to join the relatively uniform surrounding cloud deck.

As I headed back to Goat Mountain, Cloud Mountain continued its collapse and appeared to have imploded upon itself.

I arrived back at the area of my initial climb near Goat Mountain at 15,000' for the completion of Lap #1!  But I still had time before I needed to return to Williams, so I decided to fly south out to High Valley. Once there I opted to continue to the east shore of Clear Lake, which is obscured by clouds in this photo.

As I approached Clear Lake, I noticed a lennie forming downwind of Mount Konocti. Since I still had plenty of altitude, I decided to fly over to it and check it out.

The Mount Konocti wave was clearly displaying 3 of the 4 elements that make up a textbook wave system. 1-a cap cloud on the wave generating obstruction, 2-a Foehn Gap, and 3-the downwind lenticular cloud formation. The only thing not visible is a rotor cloud, which would be directly below the lenticular formation. But don't be fooled into thinking that just because there isn't a visible rotor cloud that there isn't rotor! (Wind is R to L)

I flew out in front of the lenticular until I encountered the anticipated lift. I did not attempt to map the lift and climb there, as I was already plenty high to return to Williams. Instead, I just topped of my tank by flying into the wind until the lift started dropping off and then began my return to Williams.

I was still at 5,000' when I arrived back at Williams. So I just oriented the glider into the wind and relaxed for about 5 minutes, contemplating the flight, warming my hands, and organizing the cockpit before I descended to land.

Here is my GPS flight trace from SeeYou.

I posted the flight to OLC (On-Line Contest). It can be seen here:
http://www.onlinecontest.org - Pat Alford 13-12-2

Total time of the flight was 5 hours and OLC scored the distance at just under 200 km. I'm still trying to figure out the whole OLC thing. I'm not sure why I wasn't scored from the time I released until after my first climb east of Saint John's Mountain (second climb of the flight). Maybe I should read their rules!

As I stated at the beginning of this post, this was not an epic flight by any stretch of the imagination. But it did give me a great feeling of accomplishment in achieving a number of goals on my first attempt at a solo cross country wave flight. Those goals were to 1) correctly interpret the weather conditions in advance, 2) set a reasonable goal for the flight based on the forecast, 3) adapt the flight to the conditions, and 4) arrive safely back home.

It's easy for me to do post-flight analysis and see where I made mistakes, or where I could have done things better. But hopefully those will become lessons learned that I can build upon for future flights. I can't wait to try it again!

Thanks again, Kempton, for the mentoring flights!

Wave Flight to the Pacific Ocean

In my last post I stated "But nothing can compare to what I experienced there (Williams) on Sunday, September 29, with Kempton Izuno". Well, that is no longer a true statement. What could compare to that flight? Answer: Another phenomenal wave flight with Kempton at Williams! This one occurred on Friday, November 22.

Kempton started a thread on the Williams Today Forum on Sunday, October 17, entitled "Wave Alert: Nov 21-22 (Thu-Fri)". In his post he announced an approaching "backside slider low" that was forecast to arrive Thursday night and persist all day Friday. He explained that this is a type of cutoff low that produces strong ENE winds because of its location on the "backside" (east side) of the coastal mountains as it "slides" south. The forecasted wind strength for this particular event was up to 50 knots at 18,000'. Kempton speculated that if the forecast was correct, it might be possible to fly west from Williams to the Napa Valley, then fly south and cross the Delta near Suisun Bay or the Carquinez Straight, fly to Mount Diablo or other points in the San Francisco Bay Area, and then return to Williams.

I was out of town and not scheduled to return until Saturday, so I read the posts to the thread with nothing more than great interest since I would not be able to fly Friday. But then my plans changed and I returned home on Wednesday! I immediately contacted Kempton to see if he had already made arrangements to fly with someone else since his ASH-25 (FNX) was in the shop. As I suspected, he was already tentatively planning to fly with Pete Alexander in Pete's Arcus (98). But Pete had a schedule conflict that he was trying to resolve. So Kempton agreed to fly with me in Williams Soaring Center's Duo Discus X (MG) as a backup plan.

You may have guessed, since I am writing this post, that Pete couldn't make it. On Wednesday night, the forecast winds were not looking too good for wave at Mount Diablo. So Kempton postulated that instead of the earlier plan, a flight to the north and west following subsequent downwind ranges and arriving at the Pacific Ocean might be possible. Additionally, Ramy Yanetz would be flying his ASW-27 (TG) out of Byron and attempting to fly north. So we would keep our options open and not rule out the original plan.

The potential fly in the ointment was that the surface winds at Williams were predicted to be from the north at 20-25 knots and gusting to 40 knots. Winds that strong could prevent us from even taking off! We arrived at Williams Friday morning and the winds were as predicted. But thankfully, Rex and Noelle agreed to tow us anyway. Noelle performed the tow and took us to the wave on the west side of Goat Mountain. We released at about 8,100'.

We contacted Ramy while we were still on tow. He had already climbed in the Mount Diablo wave and crossed the Delta to the Napa Valley and was heading north. Having an actual data point from Ramy tipped the scales in favor of the original plan to fly to Mount Diablo and return.

Here we are on our initial climb behind Goat Mountain at about 11,000'. Goat Mountain is to the left and not in the photo. The shot is looking to the south. The southeast portion of Clear Lake can be seen at the right in the photo. Kempton noted that the lift was farther downwind than normal, but this was not unexpected since the winds were so strong. (Wind is L to R)

Once we got above 17,000' we started heading southwest to Mount Saint Helena and the Napa Valley. The north and west shores of Clear Lake, Mount Konocti, Mount Saint Helena, and a large fire can be seen in this photo.

Several times during this flight we noticed very short-lived rotor clouds at high altitudes, like this one near the fire.

The fire became named the McCabe fire. It started that morning near a series of geothermal power plants in Sonoma County. As I write this (Monday night, November 25) the fire is 75% contained and has grown to 3,500 acres.

We contacted Noelle to find out if a TFR had been established near the fire. She informed us that none had and that she would monitor the situation and let us know if one was established.

As expected, we found great lift near Mount Saint Helena and climbed back up to our cruising altitude of 17,000' as we headed south in the Napa Valley. The views of the Pacific Ocean to the west of us were magnificent! Point Reyes can be seen in this photo. It is the promontory that the sun rays from the reflection of the sun on the canopy appear to be shining down upon.

And here is the San Francisco Bay, San Pablo Bay, and the Carquinez Straight. The Marin Headlands, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the city of San Francisco are also visible in the distance.

We struggled to find good, solid lift at the south end of the Napa Valley in order to climb high enough to make the crossing. We finally decided not to cross and instead return to the north. Ramy had reported that he had made it up to Ukiah in solid lift, so we set that as our new goal before returning to Williams.

I took several photos out the vent window as we turned back to the north. Suisun Bay, Grizzly Bay, and Mount Diablo can be seen in this photo.

Another shot of the San Francisco Bay Area.

I zoomed in for this photo to capture the Golden Gate Bride and the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.

Here is the city of Napa.

As we continued north in the Napa Valley, we could see that the smoke from the McCabe fire was now clearly showing the contour of the wave as it streamed toward the ocean.

We found really strong lift as we approached Ukiah and had to fly fast and upwind out of the lift in order to avoid going above 18,000'. With a known good source of lift marked, we decided to try flying west towards the ocean and see if we could connect with the next wave crest. Success! We found the next wave near Boonville and climbed again. We could now fly farther downwind while keeping the two previous sources of lift within glide.

This shot is looking northwest as we left Boonville. Point Arena is on the left and we were heading for the coastline just south of it.

This is looking south as we approached the coastline. The San Andreas Fault is clearly evident.

The smoke from the McCabe fire extended out into the Pacific Ocean as far as our eyes could see.

Here is Point Arena as we neared the coast.

We stopped and circled once in good lift to gain a little more altitude before making the crossing.

Looking out at the Pacific Ocean.

Looking down at the coast.

And looking north as we went out over the ocean.

You can see in this photo that the ClearNav display is showing our position across the coastline. We were officially out over the Pacific Ocean! Now all we had to do was get back to Williams, a mere 85 miles away. Sounds easy enough until you turn into the 45 knot headwind and it appears that you have become stationary!

Kempton took this short video as we turned around.

I took a few more shots from over the ocean as we began our return journey. This is looking north up the coast.

This is zoomed in on Point Arena.

And this is looking south.

This jet was climbing out of SFO. We saw quite a few jets on this flight as the Napa Valley is a major corridor for SFO arrivals and departures. A Mode C transponder is a must for flying in this area!

We retraced our path out to the ocean back to Boonville and the wave was still working at all of the previous locations. But the going was slow as we progressed against the strong headwind. We used the terrain contours on the ClearNav to predict where the lift would be based on our earlier experiences in order to find a more expeditious path back home. We worked our way to 41 nm away from Williams and allowed our altitude to climb to 17,900' for the final glide home.

While we were making good progress and it appeared that we would make it back, we were now racing against the impending darkness. When we were still 25 miles out from Williams, we assessed our situation. We were just below glide to Williams, but in slight lift. In addition, we expected that the winds would decrease as we got lower and that we would get back to a solid positive glide. The problem was that we were only achieving a groundspeed of about 30 mph and it would take us almost another hour to get back. It would be completely dark by then. So we made the decision to return to Lampson Field near Clear Lake and await a ground retrieve.

Here we are at the decision point.

We flew back to Lampson Field at 120 knots. With a 45 knot tailwind we were traveling at close to 200 mph over the ground! We were on the ground in a little over 5 minutes.


Here we are crossing Clear Lake on our way back to Lampson Field.

Kempton took this photo just after we landed as I was preparing to get out so we could push off the runway.

Here is our GPS flight trace from SeeYou.

What an incredible experience this was! Thanks to Williams Soaring Center for making this flight possible, and especially to Nick and Danny for retrieving us! Kempton and I definitely owe you a nice dinner soon!