Hey all,
What follows is a description of the Garlock flying site, plus stuff
about my flight at it on saturday. A lot of the flight stuff might be
dull. Or really exciting. Anyway, here we go!
First, locations. I highly recommend you have google maps open to follow this.
Garlock is a flying site that is south of China lake , essentially
just past the foot of the owens valley. The Bailout LZ can be found
at coordinates 35.386196, -117.827717 , (google maps can use those).
The launch is on the ridge overlooking this site at
35.418752,-117.850629 . The bailout is a pretty terrible LZ; there
are larger ones down the road tot he southwest that are better (ie,
dry lake bed, etc etc). One of the notable things about this site is
that pretty much everything is restricted airspace around it. China
lake is to the north; other restricted sections are to the south and
further, to the southeast. If you want to fly here, you better get a
sectional and take a good look at it first.
There isn't shit around, for the most part, so there is a lot of
undeveloped land. This does not mean that everything is landable,
though. A lot of the land looks great from high up but closer you
realize it is covered with 4-7 foot tall ocatillo bushes. Its
preferable to not have to land in these.
The main garlock ridge (that you launch on) runs to the northeast and
the southwest. Going southwest isn't really a winning strategy unless
you plan on landing in the dry lake and then pleading for someone to
drive out and pick you up. The main XC potential then lies to the
northeast. (You can go northwest, across the back of the garlock
ridge -- this is not advisable unless you are at 14k or something
ridiculous). The launch is on the tallest southwesternmost peak on
the ridge. Just northeast from launch there is another large peak
(around 4500 feet or 4700, about the same as launch) but you must
cross a valley (through which the road to launch runs, mesquite canyon
road, 35.41644,-117.829614 ) to get there. The valleys are, of
course, filled with sink. I'll touch on this later. Anyway, you get
to this ridge/peak, thermal, and then if you are good, fly across the
next valley ( 35.449553,-117.762709 ) northeast to the next
ridge/peak. You may notice an old abandoned airstrip at
35.427395,-117.733816 . This is an excellent LZ (and also filled with
RVs so you can have a safe landing AND beer! a lot of the time) and
was used quite a bit saturday. Its a good bailout if you get killed
in the aforementioned valley (which happened to quite a few very
skilled pilots, I think joe greblo landed here).
Now comes the decision making time. The XC task/target is generally
somewhere in the vicinity of the town of trona. Trona is a worthless
shithole of an armpit of a craphole of a meth addict paradise. A
really nice place. They also have a senior center with bingo on
weekends. Anyway, at 35.815342,-117.327633 you will find the trona
airport, a good landing place if you can make it. However, between
the abandoned airstrip mentioned above and the trona airport there is
a lot of flat land where catching something can be hit or miss. The
general route is to follow searles station cutoff which then turns
into trona road, and hunt for lift in the little bumps at
35.579011,-117.526245 , 35.584456,-117.488308 and
thereabouts, and then land if it isn't working. However, both the
larger mountain ranges to the north and south are fobidden airspace,
including all the mountains near 35.716971,-117.434235 and
35.788298,-117.399902 so basically you have to get really high some
point earlier to make it to the target. You also have to stay above
the road in certain areas or you are probably going into restricted
airspace (although if you have to do that, better to go southeast than
into the china lake airspace to the north.)
So, back to the decision I suggested above. If you get to the end of
the garlock range, where do you go from there? The general XC route is
to go the radar dome at the end of the garlock range at
35.48185,-117.68353 which is a trigger point then shoot out over the
empty plains toward the little bumps and search for lift. But you
dont want to leave without being pretty high and having a good glide.
The other issue is sink; even if you have a 9:1 glide in dead air, if
you are getting 1000ft/min down this cuts your potential glide
distance significantly (3:1 or 4:1 is not unheard of in sink). So, you want
altitude and you want landing options. The next (good) LZ is 35.490708,
-117.634327 (although I did not really know this at the time). However,
if you don't want to turn into the mountains from the abandoned airstrip
toward the radar dome and instead want to follow the road then you can
do this too, but if you dont find lift your glide to the good LZ gets .......
doubtful. And then you start wondering what to do. And this is a good
place to describe my flight. :)
The Plan
I was here with a bunch of sylmar pilots. Most of them had sport 2's.
A few had higher performance gliders: jonathan dietch (nmerider on
youtube) had his T2 (or t2c), plus a few others with a U2 or some
variety of a U2 level performance glider by aeros, or something like
that. There were also a few falcons or falcon derivative types. My
hope was that if there were going to be 2 gaggles of gliders trying
for XC I might be able to slot in with the slower ones with my moyes
sonic. I realized there was no way I would be able to stick around
with a VG-on t2c though.
Launching Garlock
The road to launch is absofuckinglutely terrible. Not in terms of
boulders (although someone incurred $700 of damage to their running
boards) or distance (although someone had to go to ridgecrest to get a
new alternator). But rather, there are a couple of sections where you
have to go up an incline that feels like you are going almost straight
up. Obviously this isn't the case but 50 degrees up from horizontal
seems reasonable. Anyway, 4WD is a must, not this "I can do it in my
2wd that feels really good!" stuff.
There are 2 launches. One faces more east and is not a great launch
in that it has lots of rocks (as does the whole hill) and is not
particularly steep. again that's at about 35.41866,-117.850645 . It
does however have a nice launch bowl which extends out in front on the
left. There is a good thermal trigger point there. The other faces
more south and is steeper (safer) and a better launch if the wind is
not cross. 35.418313,-117.851248 .
I set up, and after a few others launched the crappier east launch
(good wind direction). Launch was fine. I thermalled for a while
(and had a borrowed vario, thankfully) and got to 6500k pretty easily
(launch is at ~4700, LZ nearby ~3300). However, if you sink past an
altitude above the hill at which the thermal gets good, the bottom is
just a bunch of shitty, garbagy turbulent air. I imagine this has to
do with the lapse rate affecting thermal formation but am not sure; in
the end, it does not really matter.
I fell out the side of the thermal that the front gaggle of pilots
climbed up at launch a bit after I had sunk to around LZ altitude, so
i had to watch while they got to ~8k (or higher) while I floated
around in dead and then total sink air and could not reeneter the
thermal they were in (it was forming above me, I presumed, or behind
-- and i was not willing to scratch by a rotory hill to see if lift
was there). I fell to around 4k before finding lift again and
scratching around with a few of the other suckers. I found a mound
very reminiscent of the bump at slide between the launch and the LZ.
In front of this hill lies a bowl; the combination gave rise to a nice
thermal which carried me to 8400, but by the time I got there the rest
of the pilots were long gone. (I assumed they had gone northeast from
the garlock ridge; this was not actually the case, but they were too
far from me to be useful for finding lift). In any case, my previous
plan was certainly failing. The higher performance gliders were
downrange while the falcons had already landed in the bailout.
Finally high enough, I ventured across valley #1 (I really wanted to
make an XC flight and stay away from the bailout which looked tiny
anyway!). I hit 600-1000 ft/min down sink in the valley but shot into
600ft/min up on the other side and climbed back above 6500ft on the
opposite side. The wind was a southeast direction around 10-12 mph so
all the thermals were drifting back the direction of the XC target.
They were also floating back over the ridge which is.......sometimes
less than excellent. I proceeded down this ridge to the next valley
and saw a couple gliders either already on the ground or about to be,
at the abandoned airstrip. I crossed the valley here as well and
nearly got flushed to join them but pushed to the ridge on the other
side and entered a powerful thermal back above 7k (had to fight with
the turbulence for a while though!). I had the abandoned airstrip in
my pocket but wanted to push further.
This is where I figured i had a choice to make: follow the road (and
land if necessary), follow the ridge to the radar dome and then go
somewhere (which I could not see a good lz for), or turn around and
land in the airstrip. I really wanted to push forward but the radar
dome looked treacherous so I followed moreso the road. By the time I
got to 35.449903,-117.675719 it was clear I probably wouldn't make it
to another thermal trigger across the valley (I was at ~6.5k but had
to deal with pockets of nasty sink). So I started looking for an LZ
across the 395. I spotted a "t" of dirt roads just adjacent to 395
that looked good in many respects. 35.457203,-117.65354 It had a
wide enough distance between bushes to handle a glider near the t (not
completely untrue but......we shall see), the northwest/southeast axis
of the road which paralleled the 395 would face the prevailing SE/SSE
wind direction (again, not untrue but not really true either, I would
find out), it looked long enough (not really true), it looked close to
the 395 (that was at least true) and it looked flat (totally untrue).
I committed and started doing 360s around the makeshift LZ. As I got
lower, and past the point of no return, I started to notice dangerous
signs. First, the air was getting bumpy, so it felt that i was on the
lee side of a hill or a ridge. I wasn't sure if this would continue
to the surface but i felt too low to make a change to my plan in any
case. There was a wider spot to the north but I didn't want to land
far from the road (in case something bad happened), and I think it
looked like there were obstacles there as well. In any case, i was
losing altitude quickly. This continued to the surface, although
interspersed with pockets of lift.
As I got closer (a few turns from final) I also noticed metal poles
(or poles that looked metallic, anyway) on either side of the 't' on
the main road I would be landing in. This cut the good part of my lz
to practically zero; I would have to extend my final such that I would
not come into ground effect until I had passed the poles (assuming I
land facing southeast). This also meant I would likely run out of
wide enough lz rather quickly. Furthermore, the air was not laminar
but was still a turbulent mess. So, in my mind i am imagining things
like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
and also like this
http://30.media.tumblr.com/
In any case, I come down final fast. Really fast. REALLLLLLLYYY
fast. I'd rather not fight through turbulence slow. And I enter
ground effect and level out past the poles. Not too shabby, but damn
I am going fast. I finally realize I might be in rotor, or rather,
the downwind section of a rotor (ie, sink + downwind). In any case, I
initialized my handy if-then landing conditional:
1) If my wings are level and my feet are below me, then land on my feet.
2) If either of the conditions above are not met, become deeply
religious, tuck hands and arms in close, and enjoy the ride.
I stuck with option 1 until my left wing became closer to the ground
and then started mating with some shrubs (tall ones...) on the left
side of the road. As the left wheel on my control bar got closer to
the ground i switched from option 1 to option 2, although i do not
recall becoming an evangelical. The glider yawed left 90 degrees very
quickly(left wheel hit and started turning as the right wing swung
around) and came to a stop, while my head and helmet proceeded forward
to make an uppercase L out of the right downtube which, until
recently, had been a lowercase l. Very sad regarding the downtube, I
never though that turning on caps lock would be an expensive hang
gliding issue ;) . Otherwise, nothing bad happened (that i know
of.....) for which i am rather lucky. Examining what had happened, I
realized that the road actually significantly sloped downward in the
direction i was landing before hitting a low, then sloping upward to a
hill that was shooting lots of rotor into my lz from the prevailing
wind. However, I could not make out these features from the air.
Needless to say, do not try landing here! Whether or not i unbalanced
the wing or it unbalanced from wind or debris i am not sure.
A couple motorcylists came over to see that i was ok; I got picked up
later on retrieve after radioing my position. Jonathan and 3 others
made trona (and might have made ballarat or further (stovepipe wells)
but decided to not make retrieve a nightmare.) I would learn that
they continued past the gap to the first little bumps and caught a
thermal to 12k from which they proceeded to trona.
They made their 40 mile target; i made about 10, although given the
"landing" i'm not sure it counts ;)
Lessons:
XC is actually fun!
Keep up with the gaggle. If you don't,try to land in a good LZ.
Use real LZs! Don't be greedy.
perhaps most importantly for this case:
Walk/or 'know' your LZs! (I should have simply driven on saturday and flown sunday)
Hope it was an entertaining read and perhaps even educational.
