Winter Glider Fling                          

The Big Idea  (12/17/99)

"Why can't we fly in the winter?" Kevin asked.

"Because there's too much snow," I replied.  "Gliders don't fly in Vermont in the winter."

"Didn't you tell me that there was a ski for the Blanik?"  It was true.  In the Technical Manual of the L13 Sailplane, right there on page 48, it says On special request the Blanik L13 sailplane can be provided with a ski for operation on snow-covered airfields.  On the next page is a nice illustration of the ski installed in the place of the main wheel.

As we studied the picture Kevin said, "So we'll get a ski.  What's the problem?"  (Kevin's can-do attitude is second to none.)  I explained that a ski would probably be very difficult to find, and besides, we had no skis for the towplane, and furthermore, the runway at Post Mills was too short for such an operation.

Undeterred, Kevin suggested that we launch from a frozen lake using the club winch.  My pessimism finally began to lift.  "Has anyone ever done that?" he asked.

"Done what?"

"Winch-launched a production glider on a factory-built ski from a frozen lake."

"I doubt it."  Now we had a reason.  We could be the first.
 

Getting the Ski   (09/18/00 - 12/20/00)

The Blanik technical manual, published in 1966, had said that we could get a ski "on special request."  Thirty-five years later, our request to the factory was deemed too special.  They wished us luck, though.  Over the years I had occasionally talked with other glider pilots about the Blanik ski, but I had never met anyone who had ever seen one.  We posted a "Ski wanted" bulletin in the soaring newsgroup, but got no leads.  The project was losing steam.  Even Kevin was getting discouraged.

Nine months after the formulation of the Big Idea, I was traveling with another club member, Mike Marsha, to New Castle, Virginia to attend the Region 4 South contest.  On the way, we stopped for the night at Eagle Field in Pennsylvania, where we ran into Alexey Dushyn.

I had met Alexey in 1998 in Elmira, New York where he was the Ukrainian delegate to the biennial meeting of OSTIV's Sailplane Development Panel.  Alexey is a brilliant young aerodynamicist who was working on airfoil design at Pennsylvania State University when Mike and I happened upon him.  He is also very familiar with Blaniks.  He told us of a "guy he knew" back home who had several (!) Blanik skis, and that one of them might be for sale.  This was great news, and it turned out to be true.  With Alexey's help, we negotiated a price and arranged for the shipment of the ski from Ukraine.

The Big Idea was not an officially sanctioned club project, so we couldn't go to the club treasury for funds to buy the ski.  Kevin Brooker suggested a direct email campaign to raise money, stating that "the wackier the project, the easier it is to fund."  This became known as "Brooker's Law," and it was demonstrated in spades as the email pledges poured in.  Along with the money came some very amusing, occasionally unflattering, comments about our project.

The ski arrived a few days before Christmas.
 

Preparations  (01/20/01 - 01/29/01)

While we were working on the ski installation, we finalized our flying plans.  We would launch from Goose Pond on the last two weekends in February.  Goose Pond is in a heavily wooded area between the towns of Lyme and Hanover, New Hampshire.  We chose it because it is nearby (12 miles from Post Mills), large (about 3 miles long), oriented more-or-less with the prevailing wind, and generally deserted in the winter.  There is a boat ramp near the upwind end which would provide access.  Our plan was to place the winch on the ice near the boat ramp.  We would anchor it by the method ice fishermen use to tie down their fishing shanties:  drill a hole through the ice and tie onto a log underneath.

We sent a scouting party to the pond to check it out.  Everything looked good.  The boat ramp and parking area were plowed, the ice was thick (at least fourteen inches), the surface was smooth, and there were no fishing shanties where we planned to put our runway.

Meanwhile, back in Post Mills, we got the winch started and warmed up.  We shoveled the snow in front of it in anticipation of towing it to the pond during the coming week.

By now there was a lot of enthusiasm amongst the club members, the equipment was ready, and we were ahead of schedule.

What could possibly go wrong?
 

Obstacles  (02/05/01 - 02/16/01)

On the fifth of February, we got the biggest storm of the year:  fourteen inches of new snow.  The winch and the glider were completely trapped by the stuff; the situation looked hopeless.  To make matters worse, the days following the storm were relatively warm, which caused the fluffy snow to condense into a sticky, heavy mass.  It's as if the whole world were covered in knee-deep wet cement.

We shifted our attention from flying to shoveling driveways and roofs for the next several days.

Several club members caught the flu.

One day, for no particular reason, I started the winch.  The fan belt broke.  Our winch started out life as a 1953 Buick.  In its present configuration there is no way to find the proper fan belt by looking in a reference book.  The broken belt was completely destroyed and was no help.  The trial-and-error method, with several trips to the auto parts store, finally resulted in the installation of a Gates 7535 fan belt.  With the winch repaired, I went back to shoveling snow, secure in the knowledge that at least the winch was reliable.  Little did I know.

Three days before the first scheduled flying day, we decided that we weren't going to be able to drag the trailer through the snow, even with Doug's big pickup truck.  The only way we'd be able to get the glider would be to plow a new road to the hangar.  This seems like an obvious thing to do, but we'd been avoiding plowing around the hangars, because it causes problems for the ski-equipped airplanes based at Post Mills.  We did it anyway, and we promised ourselves that we would fill in the road after the glider was out.  What's a little more shoveling at this point?

Finally, after a week of hard labor, the glider and winch were in my driveway, ready to go.  After all we'd been through, the failure of the winch starter motor on Friday seemed like a minor annoyance.  Fortunately, I live in a neighborhood where it's easy to find a guy who knows how to rebuild a starter from a '53 Buick with no notice on a Friday afternoon.

The next day was the first scheduled flying day.  I was sure we'd used up all our bad luck.  What more could go wrong?
 

The First Weekend  (02/17/01 - 02/18/01)

Saturday

The guy who did our plowing, John Merrick, was by now an unofficial member of our club.  He volunteered to tow the winch to the pond, plow a road out on the ice (if necessary), and place the winch wherever we wanted it.  Good man.

By the time John's truck was hooked up, it had stopped snowing.  The roads were clear, and at 10:00 AM, an unlikely parade of vehicles set out for the pond.  I stayed behind to finish packing food and other gear for the expedition.

Half an hour later, my phone rang.  It was a call from a cell phone in a bad location.  I couldn't figure out who the caller was, but I could make out the words "trailer broke."  Great.  The next meeting of the Post Mills Soaring Club was convened by the side of a road in the middle of New Hampshire.  The first order of business was to stare at the winch's broken trailer tongue.  John had done a great job of pulling off to the side of the road without losing control or doing further damage.

What to do?  A passer-by who worked in the local general store referred us to a welding shop that might be open on a Saturday morning.  Sure enough, we made arrangements, and soon a rescue team was on its way.  In the meantime we sent John, with his plow, on ahead to the pond to help prepare the launch site.

The welder arrived with his flat-bed trailer, and in no time at all the winch was winched aboard.  Two of our guys went with the winch to the welding shop, and everyone else headed for the pond.

Meanwhile, back at Goose Pond...

We were dismayed to discover that the parking lot and boat ramp had not been re-plowed after the huge snowstorm.  This gave us something to do while we waited for the winch to be welded.  John and a team of shovelers plowed the beach area, parked cars, and set up base camp, which featured a makeshift dome shelter.  The kids flew kites out on the ice.  Spirits were high until there was a loud crunching sound.

John, who was out on the ice plowing a path to the designated winch site, was suddenly immobilized.  The back wheels of his truck had broken through the ice!  Fortunately it wasn't nearly as bad as it first appeared.  What we had thought of as the surface of the ice was in reality a relatively thin layer of frozen snow from the recent storm.  The truck's wheels had crunched through all the slushy layers down to the thick ice below.

Despite there being no danger, the truck was seriously stuck about a hundred feet from shore.

John, who turned out to be the guy who called me earlier, reached once again for his cell phone.  This time he called the general store and spoke with the person who had found us the welder.  John explained that the truck had "fallen through the ice," and we needed the services of a tow truck.  The helpful guy in the store called back a little while later and reported that he had called the 911 dispatcher, and that help was on its way.

This was bad news.  This was not a 911 emergency.  Apparently, if you use the words "fallen through the ice" in this neighborhood, people take you very seriously.  John should have said "stuck on the ice," but it was too late for that.  He called 911 himself and managed to convince them to cancel the fire truck and ambulance.  The police did show up, and we had a lot of explaining to do.  Fortunately, the winch (our winch) was not yet on the scene, so we were able to avoid explaining precisely why we were there.  The cop left, and the tow truck with his winch showed up.  Miraculously, during all the confusion, club members were able to push John's truck out of its hole and drive it back to shore.  We gave the tow truck driver a small honorarium for his trouble and sent him on his way.

After all this, it was almost anticlimactic when the newly repaired winch arrived a few minutes later.  We quickly decided to place the winch on the shore instead of on the ice.  This meant that the cable would run closer to the trees along the eastern shore than we would have wanted, but we had no choice.  No one seemed to be willing to drive out on the ice after John's experience.

That night we celebrated our accomplishments at a wonderful pot-luck dinner at the home of Skip Jenkyn and Laurie Greenberg.  What had we accomplished?  It took 75 man-hours to park a winch twelve miles from home.

We hadn't even touched the glider.

Sunday

The glider was untarped and hooked up to Kevin's van.  After a slow trip from Post Mills, it arrived at Goose Pond at 9:30.  While we were assembling it on the ice, we drew the attention of some friendly snowmobilers.  We convinced them that they would be a part of history if they would help us by towing the glider and the cable.  I'm not sure what we would have done without them, because we did not have any motorized vehicle capable of traveling on the ice with confidence.

We towed out 3000 feet of cable and planted our windsock at the launch point.  The wind was mostly calm, with disconcerting periods of southerly (tailwind) breezes.  The first flight was to be made by Andy Lumley, and he elected to go solo.  We took up slack and launched the first winch-ski-Blanik flight in memory at 11:34 AM on February 18, 2001.  The fact that the tailwind kept us from getting higher than pattern altitude did nothing to dampen the celebration that started even before the glider released the cable.  The glider looked beautiful flying overhead, showing off its ski.  Andy flew a nice circuit and landed, playing it safe and stopping a bit short of the launch point.  Later, as experience was gained, we learned how to slide right up to the launch point, without brakes!

Picture of a launch

Flying on ice is definitely different.  There is much less directional control on the ground (surface?) than with a wheel, as the ski seems to be just as happy going sideways as straight.  Also, it makes a lot of noise on the hard ice.  Zig-zags in the winch cable don't always come out at the beginning of a launch, as they do in grass.  On one occasion, the cable stayed hung-up on a bit of ice until the glider was well in the air, and then it suddenly let go.  The resulting surge in the cable was noticed by the pilot, who briefly suspected a launch failure.  In the air everything seemed familiar, apart from the two-mile long runway.

Everything goes more slowly in winter.  Retrieving the cable and getting the glider hooked up took two to three times longer than in the summer.  Sometimes the winch driver had to be coaxed away from the bonfire to do his duty.  We had accomplished only four flights when the volunteer snowmobilers had to leave at 2:00 PM.  For the fifth (last) flight, we had to stretch the cable out manually.  We spaced ourselves out along the cable and must have looked like prisoners trudging across the tundra to the Gulag.  The last flight landed long, sliding to a stop a few hundred feet in front of the winch.

We put the glider back on the trailer and brought it home.  Smiles all around.

Here's hoping for a headwind next weekend.  I know one thing:  we're not moving the winch.

The Second Weekend  (02/24/01 - 02/25/01)

The forecast for the second weekend looked good for Saturday, not so good for Sunday.  Our only known problem was our failure to find a snowmobile for ground operations.  At the last minute, Sonny Cilley was able to borrow one, and Doug Watson got back from vacation just in time to bring his racing machine.

Saturday was a beautiful day, and the wind direction was nearly perfect.  The glider arrived at about 10:00 AM and was ready to fly just before noon.  We were slightly more efficient than last week and were able to make eight flights.  It was good to have two snowmobiles, one to retrieve the cable and one to transport pilots back and forth between the launch point and base camp.  We didn't have to worry about retrieving the glider, because it always came to rest at the launch point, next to the windsock.

We drew a lot of attention from snowmobilers at both ends of the cable.  Once, at the launch point, a group of spectators had parked their machines near the windsock and were standing around watching the preparations.  They had questions, and Kevin wasn't too busy to be our public relations man.  Kevin had thought he had heard all the naive-bystander questions, but he had never before been interviewed by a snowmobiler:

Q:   "How fast do you go?"

A:   "About 60.  Not as fast as a snow machine."

Q:  "How often do you crash?"

A:  "So far, never.  Not as often as a snow machine, I guess."

The next question was more typical, along the lines of "How do you control it without a motor?"  Kevin gave the short version of the answer, as the launch was getting ready to go.  He said, "You just watch, this glider will zoom up into the air, fly around, and come back and land right here where we're standing!"

The glider pilot, who shall remain anonymous, gave the "all-out."  The glider zoomed up.  It flew around.  It came back and entered the landing pattern.  Kevin narrated.  The snowmobiler seemed impressed.  The pilot, who is an officer of the club, picked out a group of people and snowmobiles on the ice and set up for a spot landing.  It was the wrong spot.  The pilot, who holds the highest office in the club, made a nice touchdown and slid to a stop next to a group of very surprised strangers, about 3000 feet short of Kevin and his group of snowmobilers.  Flight operations were delayed while the the glider and the pilot, who now holds the distinction of being the only club member ever to have gotten lost in the landing pattern, were retrieved.  I dare the pilot, who is also our webmaster, not to delete this paragraph. [A note from the editor: For the record, everyone had abandoned the wind sock/launch area because of the incredible release height and duration of my flight which is why I was tricked into landing in the wrong spot (but at least I had the right lake.) Ah the power of "highest office" and being the webmaster]

Cable breaks, which seem like a big hassle in the summer, gave us an excuse to rest and get warm.  We had three launch failures, all of which were handled without problems.  One of them was due to flying with a weak link known to be damaged (it had been run over by a snowmobile).  This was incredibly dumb and should result in a scolding from the safety officer at the next club meeting.

The sky, which had been royal blue all day, began to thicken with stratus clouds.  There was very little hope for good weather on Sunday, so we decided to call it a weekend.

We started to pack up at 3:30 PM, and by six o'clock, the winch and the glider were both back in Post Mills.

Although I still maintain that gliders don't fly in Vermont in the winter, I would call our Winter Glider Fling in New Hampshire a complete success.  Give me a couple of months before you ask me if we should ever do it again.

P.S.  If anyone is looking for the Blanik's main wheel on assembly day, it's in my garage.