Ive never seen this in 25 years....

[bobby legue]

Saturday I finished my honey do list about 1 pm. It was a little gray outside and the wind was blowing 15 to 20 MPH. The temerature was 76 degrees, not the best time to fly but you get real good practice this way. I grabbed my OLY two meter and the Bird of Time ARF and off to the club field I went. First I put up the OLY and it went up on the histart and had to dive to get a release off the hook. As I moved upwind the plane kept going up. Very quickly it was a dot and I decided to come back and burn off a little altitude only to get down wind at the same or close to the same height. Thinking cool I turned upwind again and darn if it didnt start going up again. Now Im ten minutes into the flight, really high, and I start to get concerned about how to get down and land. It just didnt matter if I went up or down wind it just wanted to go up! Now Im at 22 minutes and nowhere near a height thats comfortable and I got to get down, Im getting nervous. Trying to do the long slow dive and leveling off thing with no luck, still way to high. So out of options I bang the sticks into a corner and try to spin down. OK Im comming down till I get to 200 feet all is well. When I let go of the sticks The Oly starts to climb again! I wasnt going to lose it so my decision was to put it into a steeper than normal dive for the pin and hope I dont hit a cactus or something and break my plane. At ground level I pulled up up on the sticks, not to flare but just enough to level off and land. I picked up my plane and checked it for problems and all is well, letting out a sigh of relief I walked back and put it away in my truck.
While I was packing the OLY the BOT was sorta winking at me for a chance to play ;) . Why not? I just stressed the crap out of myself, its way to windy, the BOT is known for some weak areas, but Ive addressed those issues. By now the fear had turned to just a rush and I couldnt stop smilling so as Im pulling back on the histart Im telling myself this is stupid and abort the day. Finally!!... Im in my right mind as Im hearing the voice of reason and Im thinking logically. As this blanket of sense and logic wrap over me the thoughts of doing the right thing become perfectly clear. Abort Im thinking to myself...abort.
So I threw the BOT into that wind and thought this is stupid! Had the same flight, Just couldnt get it down and now Im ranging way out there. Now I know you can stall spin down a BOT if you install ply shearwebs. It was like the whole sky was lift. Ive never seen this before in 25 years. Any body else ever had this happen to them?
Bob

[Sparky Paul]

Getting too high?
And mighty scared it ain't coming back?
Been there!
Sometimes flying upwind to get out of the lift, and descending at the same time can work.
Going inverted also works... I've been told.
I'm not that much of a fan of spinning down, these tend to become spiral dives with a potential for folding the wing at the pullout.

[TLyttle]

Yep, amazing stuff when conditions are right, the whole world seems to be going up!

I've had quite a few 1 1/2 hr flights on my Oly11, and slowly going way UPwind is the recommended escape from that. I've had the Oly so far upwind that it was getting hard to see before heading back, only to find myself 800' above the field, and away up wind you go again...

[little flyer]

I had a similar thing happen to me flying an HLG. It was windy but I just kept the nose into the wind and I specked. Spiraled down and repeated 3 times. The whole time a storm front was hanging overhead and it seemed to foggy, it had started to snow, but the snow wasnt really coming down, it was hanging. A great day.

[LVsoaring]

It's happened to me a handful of times, but never to quite the extreme of your heroic tale! I've had a few occasions where I'm working some lift like crazy, and then all of a sudden I burst into the ocean of rising air, and I dont even have to try, the machine just goes up. Just goes to show, thermals do get bigger as you go up in altitude! Thanks for sharing your great day! :D

Rick

[rscarawa]

If you are withing 200 miles of mountains with a strong wind going directly accross them, you might have been in mountain waive. I have been in that once with a full scale sailplane. The place I was flying was about 150 miles from the nearest mountain and the air was smooth but blowing about 20 knots. As long as I had 1500', I was going up no matter what I did. Even in a 2-33! It was pretty cool but hard to predict those days I think. Especially when you are that far out.

[Guz]

Been there, done that.

Scary isn't it? Total lift, with no forward flight. Just like a kite. Flight time was over an hour just trying to get the plane down. I ended up landing a plane on a residential street blindly. Fortuneately it was a quiet street, and I got lucky and put her down dead center of the street. Did it all by 'guesstimate'.

Vowed never to build a craft without spoilers ever again. ;)

[Peytr]

Once or twice every spring/ early summer our field has such conditions. The moldies keep screaming through the sky all afternoon, doing speed runs and climbs.
I like flying light planes but get nervous thinking about these occasions. I have an antique Elektra because I like relaxed flying. Fitted a vario just to find sink when things go up too fast. On these days flying upwind doesn't stop the high pitched beeps coming from the vario, indicating lift everywhere.
Nerves kick in at around 1200' and no sink found. Spinning down allways worked so far, but judging speed at these altitudes is a bit difficult. I once encountered such strong lift that (even when spinning) the vario kept indicating lift - nul - lift - nul.....Heartbeat going up, checking the throttle again and again, thinking I'm getting too old for this :p. Kind of cool, but not my cup of tea.

The white plane here on the left here is even worse. The vario doesn't fit in and it is very hard to keep an eye on, being rather small and white. When I'm building new I allways want performance. When they show they have it, I want brakes :D.

[slozuke]

I had a day like that about a month ago. The first 45 minutes or so started out like usual, flying around looking for lift but just enough to stay aloft for 15-20 minutes at a time. Then, everything became lift, went up to speck and then spiraled down only to go right back up again and do it all over again! Mine is a DJ Aerotech Monarch-D so spiraling is okay but I still try to make my spirals ever wider as I come down to gradually flatten out, I have an aversion to folding wings no matter what plane it is.
Kinda nerve racking but also an adrenaline rush at the same time. I try to make specking my goal when I'm hunting thermals but why does it always make me so nervous?
Gotta love it - can't get enough!! :D

[rscarawa]

The important thing to do is when you have a day like this, make sure you log the conditions that you had. Wind direction, speed, cloud cover etc. You found something special by accident. Most people would not think of trying to thermal soar on an overcast day. Now you know you can soar in total cloud cover as long as the wind speed and direction are similiar to the day you had your good flight.


Scot

[bobby legue]

Good point rscarawa!
Thanks, Bob