Crestline Soaring Society

With the numerous HG incidents lately committed by SHGA pilots I thought the following would just add strenght to the theory that we don't know what we are doing:)

I decided that today (Saturday) would be a good time to once again fly my new Litespeed S. OK, new to me - it's Mike Knapp's old one. I flew it twice in late March and at that time I thought that 95% of the turns were NOT pilot induced - that means I initiated 5% of the turns.

I thought Crestline would be ideal - not crowded, large LZ, and lift all over the place. Caught the 11:30 McTruck and launched about 1:30PM. My piloting skills improved dramatically - I would say at least 10% of the turns were Pilot induced - I doubled my skill level Is it true that most pilots only achieve 50% control???

After a while I decided it was time to land. I approached the staging area and notice the winds were light and from the usual direction. I circled, circled, and circled some more. I was getting that typical AJ air - 10' down and then a thermal bubble that lifts you 5' - 8'. I thought I had gotten to the point that it was unsafe to do another 360 but thought I was still a little too high so as I left the staging area I headed out on a 45 degree angle from the LZ to lenghten my Downwind. I was running out of space so I turned to Base - still too high. I headed towards the training hill - still too high. I did some S turns to lose altitude but with each S turn I was getting closer to the LZ - I was still too high. I reached down and pulled in the base bar - I might as well have pushed the ignition switch on the Space Shuttle. I was loosing LZ real estate faster than the equity in my house. The 600' LZ with 15' of elevation gain wasn't going to be enough. I let out the control frame as I went over the top of the LZ with 5' - 10' to spare. No problem - AJ has a large clear over-shoot area. I turned right towards my NEW LZ and immediately realized that I was never going to get down in the short distance before the LZ ended. So I turned left and headed out over the brush. Now brush doesn't bother me but seeing huge boulders and some discarded cement slabs didn't look to inviting. As I decended I could feel and hear my feet and harness boot hitting the waist high brush - it was time to see if I could pull off a no wind, no step landing. I pushed hard - went up a foot or so and came down into the brush. While I didn't stay on my feet, I didn't even remotely hurt myself, nothing happened to the glider, I was only 10' from the blocked off gravel road, and my ego wasn't bruised.

For those that know where Oscar landed two weeks ago - I was ~ 200' past that.

I walked the glider the 10' to the gravel road, walked to the LZ for my harness bag and truck, then packed up and headed home.

Those Litespeed S's sure do glide far - especially when you don't want them too.