July 2001 at Big Walker

Inspired by the recent discussion about XC at BW I hooked up with Bill J. yesterday and we drove up. We both had real good flying and Bill said I owed a report. Well here goes. We showed up around 2 pm to find some Glider bags on launch but no cars or people. It was blowing in lightly with few cumies around. We found out later that some pilots were chasing Dwayne at that time, he was 20 or so miles down the ridge I understand. Bill launched and didn't want to scratch too much so ended up in the LZ. He caught a ride and I launched after Rich and Jeanie showed up, around 3 pm. I also didn't get up right away and there was some serious scratching for a while. To the east the thermals got better and would drift behind the mountain and get stronger. I took one about 6 miles down the ridge to cloudbase at 7800 feet, about 4500 feet over launch or so. Once that high I never lost more than 1000 feet for the next 3 hours. I drifted east down BW ridge towards the gap. Winds at altitude were light and variable. It was perfect, smooth big thermals with 800 fpm up. No sink over 500 fpm. When I was a couple of miles from the Gap I could see Bill and talked with him, telling him I had the New River Airport in Dublin made and crossed over Little Walker with plenty of altitude and arrived about 3500 over the airport. At that point radio communication got weak. I kept saying on the radio I am going past the airport and then the radio died. I could hear but not transmit. I heard Bill saying" breaker, breaker this is Bill crossing over Little Walker heading for Pulaski". He made it sound very official. I was smiling and looking down at several light aircraft below me. It was awesome. The flatlands were even better than the mountain, I followed Rt. 100 over Dublin south to I 81 thinking whoever was following me could see me easily. I heard later that I was a little too high to be seen easily and nobody was following anyway. There were no worries at that point about retrieval, I just wanted to go. So after I met I 81 I turned left to follow I 81 to the east across the New River for another 11 miles or so and landed at 6 pm in a hayfield next to the highway where I had seen some folks cutting the hay. This was 4 miles west of Christiansburg. Now the icing on the cake started. One of the fellows driving the tractor offered me a ride on his motorcycle to the exit where 100 meets 81 where he lived. Well we were a little top heavy but I had a helmet. At the exit ramp I found a Mc Donald's where I checked in to get some libation and now it gets even better. Kermon shows up on his way over to BW and I get lucky to get a ride with him. Back at the LZ we find out that the rest of the day wasn't all that great and there is no glass off. Boy we hit it just at the right time.This was my personal best at BW and my longest XC on the east coast, need to consult the topo map to see exactly how far it is. Man oh man I am still pumped. Thanks BW and it was great seeing you all up there!

Thanks for the report Chris and congratulations on the X/C! The route you picked and flew was very impressive. I checked the distance via flight path and estimate it to be 33 miles! I'm still pumped and woke with a smile on my face. I'm sure glad we took the opportunity that was thrown our way. Jeannie Hederley (wife of Rich) came through again with her willingness to retrieve along with our Buddy Rich who had just completed a ridge X/C of his own. I didn't think I would ever get above the ridge but I kept seeing you specked out and that gave me the encouragement to keep trying while working a small pocket of lift below the ridge line. The lift I found only got me to 2200 over and I just played with it until around 5:00PM when I had built up the confidence to go over the back. I figured I'd better go while there was still some thermals around. After I made my official (pumped up) radio call I heard Bubba Goodman on the radio talking all the way from Boone NC. He was 7000 over which is around 12,000 MSL! I think he may have gone somewhere as well. It's great that we are all on the same frequency. I caught a couple of light flatland thermals and made it to Loving field in Pulaski (only 9 miles) but I was happy. I yelled down to the baseball players made my approach over an R/C flyer and landed. Then had a couple of hot dogs and popcorn and watched the game. Rich and Jeannie showed up and we had a real nice ride back via Alum Springs Road (gravel) which takes you straight back over Little Walker. Congratulations to Dwayne for the long X/C down to the big river gap area. I'm sure the guy's had a fun chase on that one!

Congrats to you and Chris also. Thanks to Tim, Med and Ricky for sacrificing what ended up being good air to pick me up although there was very little reasonable air while I was up between 11 and 3. The sky was about 50/50 cloud cover for the most of my flight with little to no ridge lift. Winds were crossing from the East with most of my ground track at only 6-10mph. I got my butt blistered by bullet thermals of 1500+ too frequently. There was lots very irregular ratty air. I struggled for over ten minutes trying to get clearance on the powerlines just across the 100 gap and was within 200' from landing on at least three occasions. The most altitude that I got was while crossing the river. The clouds were dissipating. I caught one of the last ones that were still hungry and got to it while crossing the river and topped out at around 2400 over BW launch. I rode the same cloud to the edge of what looked to be a military base and decided not to over fly it because I wasn't able to see (recent LASIK surgery went bad 20/50) whether there were any airstrips etc. that I shouldn't be flying near. Anyway I left the free ticket to the South and flew 652 East and ended up on 655 North of Price's Fork (6-7mi. East of the river gap) and landed mostly to relieve pressures and being tired of scratching so hard. I landed at N37 13.760 W80 31.224 which is 21.95 straight GPS miles. I was very fortunate to have such a great chase crew. My radio went dead at 100 then I had no contact whatsoever until Ricky somehow found my cell number and called me after I had crossed the river. I fly with Garmin w/topography so it was easy to let him know where I was on 652 then 655. BW is great. I have been lucky enough that on my past three trips to BW--- this past Friday and two last year I've racked up nearly 60mi. in three flights. One with GW to the hole behind Burkes Garden on the other side of 77 for 18mi. then repeated that a couple of weeks later alone. I remember that well because I caught a ride to Bland then walked 9mi. of 42 before my next ride. I probably won't make it back for awhile but you guys come up here a we'll do something soon.