IGC FILE

April fools

Hi, my name is Matthias Mederer. I am writing this report about a
flight that Drew Pearce and I took in the Duo Discus on April 1st. In
spite of the date, this is no joke and everything you are about to read
is true.

I was working on this Pawnee in the hangar when Charlie came to tell me
that Drew wanted to take the Duo Discus out for a flight with me. I
was excited and even more so when I saw the CU cloud-street that had
developed to the east of the Hollister airfield. We got ready and Drew
asked me if I had any water with me, and I told him I didn't. He joked:
"You better get some because you never know, we might end up in a field
somewhere!" we laughed...yeah right!
We got in and took off. I flew. Already on tow, still west of the hills
at about 3000' we noticed some areas of lift with continuous climbs of
1000'/minute for 10 seconds in a row (in back of a Cherokee) and Drew
reminded me: "Do not get off here!" he had his eyes set on the
cloud-street to the east. We turned the tow plane towards it and got
off tow at about 6000' at 2:30 PM. We worked it and got up to about
8500 and took off towards the southeast. We had a nice tailwind and
made progress quickly but always thought the lift could've been a bit
better. Already early on both of us would've liked to be a bit higher
and the cloud-street, though working, was always slightly disappointing
in it's performance. It had probably been even better earlier on. But
it still ended up getting us down to about 10 miles west of Coalinga in
less than an hour. From there we turned east and headed out into the
Central Valley towards a little CU. Hit a little bit of lift . After a
couple of miles without the slightest amount of lift I was still
joking: "Are you really gonna burn through all that altitude we just
had to get to this little CU and what if it doesn't work?" It was only
funny for about another couple of minutes. Now we found ourselves about
ten miles in the flatland and the CU we had just been looking at had
disappeared by the time we got there. Not good. As we made our first
turn over the valley we looked back and to our surprise the
cloud-street we had come down on had also disappeared. Even worse!

Drew had been pointing out all the little airstrips as we passed them
on the way down and I was thinking how handy it might come in after all
that he knows every one of them...pretty soon we were content in
finding the tiniest amounts of lift to sustain our flight, as the wind
had blown most of the thermal activity away by now. In a way we
couldn't believe it: Just minutes ago we felt confident in our
situation having come down here stopping only twice to circle in lift,
and all of a sudden we found ourselves scrambling to stay up. It was so
bad that after about 15-20 minutes and Drew announcing "*&@#^!" a
couple of times we conceded that we had to land in Coalinga. At first
we thought we had Coalinga made but quickly realized that even such a
close goal was hard to attain. The headwind deteriorated our glide
performance so much we started doubting that we could even make it
there. But as it was, Drew was able to find us something of thermal
nature...except the more we climbed the more it looked like Avenal was
going to be our destination, because at that point we had drifted so
far downwind! We tried to find another thermal but that seemed to be it
for us. Also: our radio seemed not to wanna transmit. Nobody heard us.
Luckily, we were easily low enough by now to get cell phone service and
Drew called and left a message, saying we were landing in Avenal.

And we had already had our gear down, when Drew handed me the sailplane
: "I've been flying for a while, you take it and play a bit in this
before we land" and I found something that took us to the kind of
altitude that would get you to the ridge just west of Avenal and we
just made it there, leaving the only land-out possibility a (nice) set
of fields (which would've been fine) but that ridge took us to several
thousand feet at which point Coalinga started to look better and
better again. At first we were joking about it and then it was clear
that Coalinga could be made again. Drew and I thought separately about
a plan and arrived at the same idea: To take the smaller ridge to the
right which leaves an out into the valley and a better chance to make
Coalinga. If it hadn't been for the insane wind! probably at least 35
knots at that point.

But that same insane wind also had just let us ride the ridge all the
way up and now that we had broken out into the valley we found some
strange lift that seemed quite stationary in spite of the high winds
and we labeled and identified as a wave. Soon we saw lenticular clouds
to prove it. We rode the burbly rotor to about 10000' and headed out to
hopefully find the real wave. We couldn't call the tow pilot off
because of the dead radio, and cell phones don't work.

Getting to the wave cost us some real altitude and nerve, the winds had
gotten so bad. Sure enough we found the wave (!), Drew got the oxygen
bottle out and kept well oxygenated to make sure it wasn't just me
feeling really great over here and and we took the it up to about 13500
. In the meantime two more lennie cloud-bands had developed so clearly
and beautifully -in even spacing ahead of "our" lennie- that our
combined consensus allowed me to fly on, pressing into the setting sun.
But the sink was strong and as the next band of lennies seemed to
disappear in front of our eyes (again!). The location of the first
disappearing Lennie still gave us something back. The second "location"
was weak an Drew used the "*&@#^!" - word for the second time during
our flight to accurately describe the situation.

He correctly noted that we really should've taken that first fat wave
all the way to the top, since the flight computer still asked for
thousands and thousands of feet to get home. But as he was complaining
I was still finding bits of lift in which to climb in and flying 80
knots or more in-between until he stopped me and made me fly speed to
fly as per the computer. The sun got lower, the lift got less, and the
mountains seemed higher and more of them seemed to appear in the
distance as soon as the one under you finally disappeared ...and my
feet were really cold.

We considered having to land in Panoche but were still making headway
with the setting sun to our left and with Drew keeping my Speed to fly
errors down to 1.746 kts we made it so we thought we might have made it
to Bickles. But even though we seemed to stand still as soon as we
pulled up in lift we also miraculously still found some lift that kept
us up in the first place! And as soon as we started to look better I
bolted 80 kts. again as Drew and the computer had us making Hollister.
Drew took it for the last mile and an elegant approach into 24 at a
time when other people were already using the runway lights and we
coasted off the runway after about 4 1/2 hours of beautiful soaring
flight. It was the most interesting and challenging flight I have had
to date, having is so stoked on one hand and so desperately downwind on
the other.

After having already made amends FIVE TIMES with the fact that we are
going to FOR SURE land somewhere far from Hollister for a cold, windy
evening of waiting and having used FIVE different kinds of lift to
actually make it home - even if by the skin of our teeth - we felt so
great...like we really earned our wings that day...

footnotes:
1.) I didn't have a GPS trace to look at (even though I briefly saw it)
when I wrote this, this data comes from my human flight recorder, so
please don't quote me on the exact altitude and location. I do know the
trace starts at 5000' because that's when Drew told me to turn the GPS
unit on.

2.) The tow pilot who tried to tow us home from Avenal (obviously)
couldn't find us there but went to Harris' Ranch and ate instead.

3.) about the author: I was born and in Hersbruck, Bavaria, Germany and
raised on the airfield there. My dad was one of the founding members of
the glider club and the head of three flight instructors. He taught me
how to fly when I was very young and I soloed at 14 in 1975 in a K7 on
a winch. I am still a member in that club (
http://segelfliegen-hersbruck.de/ ) as a matter of fact: the OLC
contest is run by two guys in our club: Reiner Rose (idea and
organization) und Dr. Hans Trautenberg (software development).
But I was also meant to be playing the guitar and that's what had me
playing the streets of New York City at age 20 in 1981. I am still
playing now and own and operate a little recording studio in SF since
10 years. ( http://www.drCrecording.com/ ) I got my american license in
1999 at Crazy Creek and was flying there for a few years. I met Drew
doing aerobatics two years ago and have been working/ flying in
Hollister ever since (time permitting).
See you there - Matthias Mederer (say Ma-Tea-us)