In my first report, I opined whether the past nine years of experience would have helped me figure out Hobbs this time around. So far, the answer seems to be no. The thermals here remain as befuddling to me as they were back then. I feel like flying here I am constantly grasping at each point, always a step or two behind what the air is doing. The Duckhawk is particularly frustrated with me. This is a glider that needs to be flown; she will complain when the pilot does not know what he’s doing. If you anticipate the gust and pull, the glider will get a lot of energy and do great. But if you sort of aimlessly blast around, the ship will lose all the more on the backside of the gusts. It has been very frustrating.
Day Three was interesting as the conditions were to be quite good, but blue for most of the task. Only the leg to the north from Littlefield to Muleshoe was to be in cumulus. Coupled with a 220 mile assigned task to keep all the gliders together, I thought this would finally be a day that would make sense.
Getting up and to the start was much more straightforward today and the gliders merged into a coherent start gaggle. I found Noah and Tim Taylor and we were happy to stick together to play, and watch the others play their start. After losing a cycle and getting a bit lower and watching the other gliders go, we found ourselves a little below the start, but in an excellent starting position. The gaggle was ahead and it invited us to give chase.
We charged off across the start (this time BELOW the speed limit; lesson learned from Day 2) and we picked our way along the blue toward Littlefield. I quickly disconnected from the lift band and watched Noah waft his way up and up, 1000ft above me halfway up the leg. At that point our days diverged and he pressed ahead.
My main goal was to get in a controlling position on the gaggle. Once I hit a 3.5 knot thermal, I threw out the brakes and worked up and up, trying to get higher than the people ahead. Finally, going into the turnpoint things were looking halfway reasonable. I was flying with TT, MB, SV, and FS, and we were making good work of the clouds.
Approaching Muleshoe, I saw the clouds dissipating ahead. I worked my way up to cloudbase with the tailwind, finally well established in the band. We rounded the turn and I worked the east side of the courseline, staying upwind and with the several wisps. One more final climb to 11,000ft and I headed off into the blue with FS and SV.
The air was dead smooth for a while. This is particularly concerning when you’re heading toward what looks like a desolate moonscape. We got lower and lower, and more and more concerned. The gaggle was taking weak thermals, working together to core the scraggly thermals and then moving on to the next whiff. We did this the whole way to Tatum, where we finally connected with a 3.5 knot thermal. Some took it to cloudbase, I worked a bit further and found a somewhat stronger climb. Even with a meaty margin, I got crushed on the final glide. At one point I thought I would come up short and took several turns in 1 knot to just get a bit higher. I then floated my way up a little street and squeaked in above the minimum finish height.
Noah had made it home something like 20 minutes prior. He managed to get connected with the Club Class gaggle and ride the better part of the day home. He’s now first overall, having had an absolutely crushing day. Sylvia Grandstaff also had a great day, sitting several points behind in second overall in Club Class. It’s fun watching them go!
As far as I am concerned, I’ll be satisfied when I no longer feel like I’m flying like a drunken sailor. My current theory is that the thermals here basically refuse to coalesce. In most places thermals organize somewhere between 1000 and 2500ft above the ground or so into a more-or-less coherent core. Here, if this happens at all, it happens closer to 2/3 of the way up the band. This is even the case when the wind is fairly light.
Additionally, at lower altitudes the thermals will still be fairly strong, but they rarely last more than several turns before they start conflicting with a neighboring bubble. The centering and recentering here is unbelievably frustrating. Each turn you have no idea if you’re thermalling badly, or you just need to move 300 yards elsewhere.
All of this is to say, that being lower here is penalized severely. It is kind of like those days where you get cloudsuck and if you stay high and connected that you sail over all, but as you get lower, the band diverges and it can be a struggle to get back. The difference is that here this happens all the time, even with no clouds, and with little wind. If you stay within a 1000ft band, the top of which where the lift starts to weaken quickly, and the bottom where it just starts to halfway organize, then you can float along and periodically pick up a decent thermal. Ideally, it is best to do this while covering others to work the better air and get higher L/D in the glide. This favors “the long glide” approach of yesteryear, where backing off 10-15 knots to give more distance to sample for a better thermal. While the Europeans have soundly rejected this approach and in most places flying faster (in good air) does better, perhaps favoring theories from the 80’s is the way to go in a site that is from the 40’s, flying mostly with pilots born in the 60’s and 70’s.
Soaring Economist 