[skyshaddo]

Ryan goes big yesterday in Utah, Launching from Horse Heaven, flew 125 miles to Parowan Airport, landing in front of many of the sailplane pilots there for an OLC gathering.

Way to Go Ryan


Shaddo

[AIRTHUG]

Not Dustin Martin big

Couldn't have done it without my fantastic chase crew- Cal, Davie, Shaddo, and of course Jackson the Dog.

This was my third "real" XC... and I'm pretty surprised I pulled this one off!

I called it before launching... but smack talk is a lot different than actually thinking I'd go the distance

Highs and lows of the flight:
-my vario froze up shortly after launching, so I had no alt, airspeed, S2F/McCready, or nav. It was still beeping, though... so I essentially flew 125 miles with a Sonic
-Lowest save of my life- 50 ft, turning on final hit a thermal and 360'd. If I didn't climb in the 360, I would have had to level off and flair at the same time, but I would have been close to into the wind. Never seen a save THAT low before...
-While trying to evacuate fluids, my harness zipper blew out... flew the last 40 miles with my harness (and my fly) unzipped. It was cold around 12k, but no idea how cold or exactly how high because of the vario issue.
-Radio died about 10-15 miles before I landed, so had to communicate with 1-click for yes and 2-clicks for no.
-First flight with my new SPOT tracker... worked great!

But the highlight for me was being told by several people that 100+ mile flights don't happen without a big tailwind, and without always having an LZ within easy reach. I was lucky if I had a 10 mph tail, and I was probably never further from a NICE clear flat LZ than maybe 4:1.

I also forced myself to not fly the mountains and flew most of the flight over the desert flats West of I-15. In prep for competing, I really wanted to work on my flat-land flying skills. This day gave me a lot of practice!

Unfortunately no tracklog because of the frozen vario... but here's the basic route I followed, and the SPOT check-in points (every 10 min +/-)

[mrcc]

Con grad
Did video the flight ?

[AIRTHUG]

No video; Doing something new to me, focusing on the flying...

[John C]

Congratulations, Ryan. Glad you are safely telling us about it. Is this your longest flight (distance)?

[AIRTHUG]

yep, longest-to-date

Done three "real" XC's now... 63 miles, 80 miles, 125 miles...

I have a feeling the next one will be a let down and break the pattern

[CAL]

ya! it was great i was attempting to go a little ways myself along with another comp pilot who has won several meets like King, that made it only 3 miles out, we had one good launch cycle that got our comp pilot and Ryan at a good altitude , then i launched, Ryan headed out on the route with our comp pilot, Ryan stayed on route both got low so our comp pilot went back to where he last found lift, gave it a valiant effort to get up then landed 3miles out, needless to say i got low and ended up in Bail out LZ, then i hear Ryan over the radio, just made the lowest save i have ever made, from there we all cheered him on as we made the 130 mile trip to Parowon, we were in the car when we saw him straight above us following the freeway.

Shadd would have been right with him, if he would have had his T2C he is waiting for when Wills Wing brings one back from Demo Days, so he was very kind to be our driver

Shadd was very ingenious to make do when we could no longer get reception from Ryans radio, he could not transmit but he could hear us, we could how ever hear the clicks when he did try to transmit, So Shadd set up a 2 click for no and a 1 click for yes code and would ask him yes and no questions, which ended up making it very easy to locate him and knowing his intentions, What a genius he was at asking the right yes or no questions to get the info we needed, you are amazing Shadd !

You too are amazing Ryan you pulled it off, even
with all the equipment failure and to top it off you had a perfect landing !

the whole thing was amazing to watch WOW !

[Wes]

Figures you would fly though the Filmore/ Beaver area

Figure out what was the problem with the vario?

[AIRTHUG]

Talked to Steve Kroop (Flytec USA) this morning...

Vario details were as follows: Flytec 6030 using the latest beta firmware. I have the entire US CTR data on an SD card, and I have it set to 2 sec recording intervals. I have not cleared my flights out in over a year. When it froze I was trying to zoom on the map page, and pressed the button several times in rapid succession.

Steve said: First, when the recording log is full, it automatically wraps, deleting old data. In the first 10ish minutes the instrument is powered on, it will be loading the local CTR data from the memory card. I was pushing too many buttons too quickly, while it was probably trying to delete on old cluster, load CTR data, and log data every too seconds, and it was just too much for it. Kind of understandable when I think about it now...

Regarding clearing flights, Steve also said it is good to do a total clear of flight log data every once in a while. Not deleting flights one-by-one, but going into instrument settings and selecting DELETE ALL FLIGHTS. His analogy was it's like writing on paper in pencil... you can erase it and write again... and erase it and write again... but each time some artifacts get left behind, and you need to start with a clean page... which is what you get when you completely clear all flight data.

Great customer service and product support... even when using beta firmware!

Can't beat Flytec!

[pjwings]

Dang ryan, great flight!

[danmoser]

125 miles without a tailwind .. all of it over flatland !!
It is not so easy to do .. an accomplishment to be proud of !!

[Bobfly]

Congratulations on all 3 of your XC's. A 50 ft save is definitely something to brag about as is flying all that way without instruments. Impressive.

[knumbknuts]

nice flight, thanks for the flytec tips

[Rebardan]

Utah's cross country conditions are EPIC in summer.
Way to go Ryan.
Rejuvenate the Utah Cup!
I stumbled on Jeff Roberson's page while netsearching

http://user.xmission.com/~jmr/HANGLIDE/UTAHCUP/CUPHIST.HTM#Introduction
I'm surprised that so few pilots take advantage of the conditions.
Hopefully that'll change.

[AIRTHUG]

We're a social bunch, and the pull from the beer cooler is quite strong. Drivers are also in short supply

[andylongvq]

Hey, cut it out... you're making me jealous!!

Nice job.

- Andy

[rongleason]

Am I the only one that is suspicious of this?

[AIRTHUG]

At Parawon Airport we met a guy that said he was the New Zealand national champ in '82 ish, and a woman that said she either created or ran OLC.

I landed in Parawon because of OD, I'm pretty sure with one more climb to base (which I left to land) I had Cedar City on glide

And yea, equipment issues were more challenging than the actual flight. The glider and my salad bowl helmet were the only things that worked flawlessly

[danmoser]

[oldhgpilot]

Way to go, awesome flight! Where's the celebration in the LZ picture? What time did you launch, land?