On June 19th this year in the blackness of night Gordon Boettger and his copilot Bruce Campbell donned expedition clothing mountaineers use to climb the highest peaks in the world, stepped into a specialized high performance sailplane, put on their night vision goggles and took to the skies of the Sierra mountain chain at 0230. They didn’t know it yet, but they would be in the air flying “wave” (aka the “monster”) for over 17 hours and go farther than anyone ever has in a glider, ultimately ticking up 3055 kilometers, or 1898 miles. Gordon has been chasing the monster for years. It’s his specialty. It’s a little more tame than his day job, flying commercially for FedEx…and it certainly isn’t tame. Flying in the lee of mountains with winds that border on hurricane strength isn’t for the feint of heart. When you get it right you fly straight for huge distances, the vario beeping consistently and you can enjoy the view, which is pretty astonishing at heights that can reach well over 30,000 feet. But when you get it wrong it’s a pretty serious game of holding on and trying desperately to find an out. Rotor is extreme, the sink is alarming and it’s like trying to stay on a very pissed off bucking bronco. As the saying goes, when you’re high you’re high, when you’re low you’re low.
The pilots approach Mt Whitney at 0500 on second leg northbound
In this episode Gordon takes us through his history of flying gliders since he was a teenager and we crescendo with the record flight. He discusses a very close call on a previous flight in the Sierras where he missed the wave and found himself battling obscene sink. And we discuss what’s possible looking ahead. On a day Gordon called at best a 5 out of 10, what could pilots who chase the monster pull off?
“Watching with the (goggles) it was amazing to see the sky,” he said. “The Milky Way was blowing up, there were shooting stars all over the place — it was absolutely breathtaking. We were at 23,000 feet in the middle of nowhere. It really kind of opened a whole new door.”
Buckle up, this one will blow your mind.
The conditions at high altitude can be pretty extreme, even in a protected cockpitOver Lee Vining looking east over Mono Lake on 2nd leg northboundLooking south into the Owens at 1400 12 hours into the flightCrossing 3,000 kilometers…1915 hours S of Alturas looking NE trying for the 3,000 km barrier. Where to go?16.000′ vertical velocity at 0800 over course line
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Speaker 1 (0s): Hi there everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloud-based Mayhem. I have an outrageous story for you today and conversation with Gordon Boker. If you don't know his name, you will. He broke the record recently in a sailplane going farther than anybody ever has, although you'll hear why it wasn't a world record, the way they count things with declared distances and points and that kind of thing. You'll hear about all that in the show.
But I was sent an article sometime in late June about a gentleman who had flown for 17 hours, flew all night with night vision goggles in wave Chasing, the big Monster in a sailplane with a copilot up and down the Sierras. And I thought I read the article and went, oh my God, I gotta get this guy on the show. So this is it. We've been trying to get together for the last couple months. Finally did, had an outrageous talk and a lot of fun with this.
And Gordon is a commercial pilot for FedEx Flies all over the world. He is awesome to follow on Instagram. You, as you check him out, it's G R b O E T T G E R, Boettger. He's been flying his whole life, came out of the Navy. He's been flying sailplane since he was a kid. And these days just almost exclu, exclusively chases wave. He chases the Monster in the Sierras. So we eventually, we talk about a lot of flying and his history and photography and a bunch of the stuff that he's really passionate about.
But eventually we get to his amazing flight, stays up in the air. Like I said, 17 hours flies all night, does it with night vision goggles, has a very, very special sailplane. There's only four of these in the world that was really built for exactly this kind of mission. So he's way into it. He is wild. We had an outrageous time talking about this. I think I've just said that now three times, but it's the only way to describe it. And one correction is he mentions a few times I g c of course, we all know what an I G C file is, but what he was, what he meant in that capacity was, was the f a i.
So he is talking about, you know, how to spit records and, and governing body. But that's all pretty obvious. We were just, we were both having a little cocktail when we were recording this, and we were so excited. Neither one of us caught it. So enjoy this. I'm not gonna say it again, but crazy conversation with a, with a, an exceptional pilot Gordon broker. Cheers, Gordon.
We've been chatting here for a bit, but welcome to the Mayhem and I'm really excited to talk about this insane
Speaker 2 (2m 59s): Flight you did. This came, I don't remember how this came over. My, flew over my desk one day in the last couple months. I know this was June 19th when you did it, but I read this, the article and went, my God, I gotta talk to this guy. And so we will, we will get there. But let's, let's, let's just tease our listeners here a little bit and get into, I'd love to hear more about your, your history. I, you know, I know you fly big jets for FedEx. You've been doing that for a long time. You mentioned you were in the Navy to begin with, but how did you get to this point where you can fly these sailplane?
So, well, let's, and take your time, but let's, let's get, let's get us up to speed.
Speaker 3 (3m 40s): Well, it all, it all kind of started as, as a kid, you know, my dad, he, he and my mother immigrated from, from Germany and back in the late mid sixties, he was in the German Air Force out there. So he was always, I got a very family oriented or aviation oriented family. So my, my father got me into it. He used to throw me in the backseat of these gliders down in the Mojave Desert when I was a kid. And, and I kind of took to it. And my mom worked for Flying Tigers at the time, and I used to be able to do some non rev flights sometimes in the cockpit.
And I always thought, this is a pretty cool, pretty cool lifestyle. These guys are living all, you know, flying all over the world and just having a good time, making decent money. A lot of time off. And I go, I think this is something I might wanna do. So, you know, my dad introduced me to soaring at, at the age of 13. And I, I took to that down in Southern California. There was actually a place down in long down in Los Alamitos at the military base that had a soaring program. So I got involved with that at age 13 and then sold it on my 14th birthday. And then just, was
Speaker 2 (4m 40s): Your dad military?
Speaker 3 (4m 41s): Yeah, he was in German Air Force out there. And then he came out here and got a job in McDonald Douglas as, as a, as an engineer with Douglas. But he was a flight instructor and, you know, I grew up doing a lot of surfing, so that was kind of my life. And I knew I had to, you know, eventually, you know, do something that's, that was gonna be a little more serious. But the, the glider stuff I just got, I just got hooked on and, you know, just like in the paragliding world, you just, you know, you kind of, you know, what's, what's next. And so I soloed on my 14th birthday and then started getting into this cross country stuff and, and you know, old Schweitzer 1 26 glider, which is kind of a low performance, you know, probably the 24 to one glider ratio type glider.
But I started getting into that cross country thing as a kid. And then I started going out to the desert every single weekend. And that was my life, you know, every weekend I'd go out to the desert, sleep in my buddy's back, you know, in the back of his Toyota pickup truck. And we'd just fly gliders all weekend long and then drive back and get back to school Monday morning. So that was my life. And then that helped me actually get into the military, the flying background. I started with power at age 15 and solo on my 16th birthday with the power power planes. But the, the engine stuff didn't, didn't intrigue me because it was, it was, you know, after flying gliders, it's pretty boring, you know, know right.
Having a motor hanging out there. So, so I kind of stuck with the glider stuff and, and really started stretching my distances and going after these, these soaring badges, you know, that Soaring Society of America has and started acquiring all those. And then, and then I joined the military. So I joined the Navy, went off to Pensacola flight training, two years of flight training, and then spent six years active duty flying off of two different aircraft carriers and did my time and punched out of there. And then got a job with FedEx at age 28.
And then I've been doing that. What,
Speaker 2 (6m 32s): What were you, what were you flying off the carriers? What were, what was your e
Speaker 3 (6m 36s): E two hawkeys. Okay. It's carrier basically carrier BA based aax to crop airplane. So yeah, I did my time there and then, you know, in the Navy Did
Speaker 2 (6m 47s): You enjoy it?
Speaker 3 (6m 48s): You know, the flying part, the, the flying stuff on off the boat was really challenging. That part was fun, but I just didn't, I didn't enjoy life sitting on a, you know, sitting on a big gray thing with 5,000 dudes, you know, for six months that, that got old. I bet. But you know, I mean, it was a stepping stone to get the airlines, 'cause I needed that flight time and I didn't have the money to, to pay for that myself in, in the civilian world. So I had to,
Speaker 2 (7m 14s): That's a great way to get hours,
Speaker 3 (7m 15s): Use the military and, you know, it's, yeah, you serve your country and you know, that, you know, all that kind of jazz. But that was good and that was all good and, and got my experience. I'm, I'm glad I did it. You know, it, you grow up pretty quickly doing it. And you know, it's funny, looking back now, you see these kids that are, that were my age, you know, 22 years old flying off these boats and you're going, oh my God, these kids are letting these kids fly these airplanes off, off of carriers, you know? So I'm kind of, kind of aging myself. I'm like the old man now, but
Speaker 2 (7m 42s): You know, the the mean, it's not all Top Gun, it's not that exciting. That's right, that's
Speaker 3 (7m 46s): Right. Yeah. Not, I'm not the Tom Cruise looking guy, that's for sure. But you know, it, it's funny, during the Navy, during my time in the Navy, I was still always, you know, I still wanted to really get into the Sailplane stuff, the distance stuff. And obviously, you know, with the family and all that, I just didn't have the time to do everything I wanted to do. So the glider stuff was kind of put on hold. And then it, we've been up here in the men area for 21 or about just about 21 years now. So, so once we got back here, so
Speaker 2 (8m 17s): Was that, was that immediately post Navy? So you, has that been? Yeah,
Speaker 3 (8m 21s): It was about two years after, two years after I got outta the Navy, I, I bailed outta San Diego. I was living down in San Diego and, you know, I was flying down in Winter Springs down the, in the, you know, hills east of San Diego and you know, the soaring is okay, but you can't really get out and do the big stuff like you can here, you know, it's not the big stuff. But once I moved up here, then I started getting really serious about doing, doing big wave flights. And that's what, you know, I knew I was always limited distance-wise with thermal flights because we're, you know, relying on the heating.
And with mountain wave, it's just a whole different, whole different animal, you know? And it's super good here, both thermals and wave.
Speaker 2 (9m 0s): I mean, was that, was the wave flying and I mean, because this is something really beyond the stretch that, you know, hang gliders can touch it, but the really, yeah, you know, I, we have, I flew in wave in the Alps during the 2015 X Alps and you know, it, it's pretty rowdy for us. You know, that's, that's just, that's a lot of, that's a lot of win. But was this something that was early on? Was it on your radar from the 14 or was this something slowly? I mean, you know, you guys just in, in your world, this is what you guys do.
Speaker 3 (9m 34s): Yeah, I mean, wave is, overall, wave is very, it's, it's not popular with most, I would say probably 90% of the, the sailplane pilots. 'cause they, they don't want to deal with the elements. They don't want to deal with the winds, they don't want to deal with the cold, the icing, the freezing and just the turbulence and all the other crazy stuff that goes along with it. I mean, there's a price to pay for these, these distances. You gotta be willing to, to deal with that kind of, you know, to deal with those risks. And I mean the, the, yeah, the risks, the risks are are are there and then, and everything's kind of heightened and you gotta be on your A game.
But I think it can be safely done. But backing up to when it, when it all started, I started flying wave at probably age 15 and, and 16, I mean, when I was 16, I was like, I was a, I think 16 or 17, I went up in the Owens Valley. I was up, you know, above balloon pine at 34,000 feet, you know, 16 year old kid. Wow.
Speaker 2 (10m 27s): No. You know, freezing my ass off.
Speaker 3 (10m 29s): Yeah. Wow. Wow.
Speaker 2 (10m 31s): It was pretty wild. Not pressure. I talk, talk about the, I mean be be, we got a long way to come up to where you're now, but even back then, what, what equipment, when you're 16 flying at 34 grand, what, what do you, what are equipment are you using? Are you just on bottled oxygen? You're just bottle paragliding? Okay.
Speaker 3 (10m 48s): Yeah, I mean nowadays we have the e d s regulators, but back then you had, you, you either had a constant flow system or you had a pressure command regulator, you know, the old military type A 14 regulator. And at the time I had an a 14 regulator and you know, those drain you of O two as well as, you know, the constant flow system. So back then, you know, I'm flying with an A 14 regular, you know, you're not pressurized or heated. And, and you know, they had a, back in the fifties, they did a big Sierra wave project and with, you know, that was kind of a government sponsored type project that they did for several winners.
Speaker 2 (11m 23s): Like a pre per land type of thing.
Speaker 3 (11m 25s): Yeah. And they, so they learned a lot because that was all done at Bishop. So they learned a lot about rotor turbulence, you know, and, and all this other wacky stuff that goes on with Wave and you know, they end up writing books about it. And so wave has been, you know, it's been something, an area, an area that people touched, I think, but not really seriously gotten into. 'cause like I said, a lot of people don't like dealing with, I mean, I'll go to the Menden airport and you'll see 30 gliders tied out in the, the summertime. In the wintertime, nothing, you know, they're like, we're done gliders in the box, see in spring.
And, you know, I'm like, Hey, if, if the air is going up vertically, use it. You know, and as long as you can safely do it and, you know, take advantage of it. And that's, that's, I've always been intrigued with the wave because I think all the records from here on out are, are gonna be done, are gonna be done in waived. Sure. They have to be. 'cause you just can't, you can't do that. And with the, the length of day you, the limited length of day you have in, in thermals as you, as you guys know. So
Speaker 2 (12m 24s): When you were 16, flying at 34 grand are, are you, are you flying in triple sleeping bag? How are you staying warm? It's not even pressure. No, I just cockpit and all that.
Speaker 3 (12m 34s): Right. Well, back then we had the moon boots, you know, so you had the, was big goofy moon boots, so you had the moon boots and you're just, you're freezing your ass off, you know, freezing, you know, and I mean, at that age, you don't, you know, you're not doing the research to find out what, what the proper gear is. You're, you're, you're learning the hard way, you know, you're coming back. Yeah. And your fingers and feet are about to fall off and yeah. And you go, why am I doing this? But you know, when the canopy's icing up and guy said, oh, you gotta use alcohol and spray it on the canopy. And so I'm, I'm shooting the canopy and the whole thing's icing up and, and that didn't do anything. And then people say, you know, so it's, it's a lot of goofy stuff.
But yeah, it was pretty spooky that one day. And that was actually the day after my friend Bob Harris broke the world Alte record. He, he got up to 49,009 feet un pressurized. So, oh, that's, that was pretty un
Speaker 2 (13m 19s): Pressurized.
Speaker 3 (13m 20s): Yeah, that was ballsy to me. That's, that's like, that's like Chuck Yeager type stuff. That's old, you know, that's old school. He just did it and whole lot stuff. Kind of standard, standard glider and, and, and one up there and, and pressurized and a, a friend of mine that I grew up with, the guy he used to go up flying with, he was a, you know, he was like 19 or 20 at the time and he got up to little over 40,000 feet and he got bent that that that day. And so he was in the Marine Corps and the following day he ends up, you know, we, we crashed out in the back of his Toyota truck.
And so we celebrated because Bob Harris got the world out to record my buddy Howard Foot. He got, he got a little over 40,000 feet. So we wake up the morning, we're sleeping in sleeping bags in the back of his truck. And he goes, man, I feel like shit. I go, what's going on? He goes, I don't know. And I go, dude, the waves working. We, we gotta fly. He goes, I can't. He goes, I gotta drive back down to El Toro where he was stationed. He drives down to El Toro, barely makes it down there. And he checks in the medical and like, what, what were you doing? I, I, you know, flew up to 40,000 feet.
And so they, they put him in a chamber down in San Diego, and he got Ben big time. So was
Speaker 2 (14m 27s): That, was that with, would that have been hape?
Speaker 3 (14m 30s): No, he got,
Speaker 2 (14m 31s): Or he, he
Speaker 3 (14m 32s): Got a, he got an aerial embolism, so he got, you know, the nitrogen, you know, you know the bubbles and the bloodstream. Yeah. So, so, so he got, yeah, he got
Speaker 2 (14m 42s): Diving in reverse.
Speaker 3 (14m 44s): This is a whole nother story, but at the time, this could be a whole nother podcast type thing, but at the time he was trying to get into the Marine Corps to fly, he was an enlisted guy. He knew the general of the base, general bloomer. General bloomer was gonna help him get into the flight program. Well, about six months after he got bent, he submits his paperwork to get in the flight program. He, he's gotta do this medical thing eval, and they go, you can't fly you, you've had the Benzs. So he goes back to General Bloomer, says, Hey general, you gotta fix this.
You're a general by the way, you know, and general says, Hey, I, hey, I can't do anything about this. What does he do? About a year later he steals an A four jet out of El Toro. It flies it out over fricking southern California. Yep. And lands what? Yeah, lands it back at Del Toro and gets, you know, a military. He took, it was the 4th of July weekend, he took off a midnight dark runway and he was, he just, Jo jumped in a, in a jet and it was an oh eight four, it had an internal A P U and then started it up and then blasted off and then came back and, and he got thrown in the bri and you know, it ended up in the papers and all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (15m 49s): So there is some top gun shit going on.
Speaker 3 (15m 52s): Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (15m 55s): That is awesome.
Speaker 3 (15m 56s): Yeah. So anyway, buddy Foot, yeah, he got hammered for that. But yeah, so fast forward, you know, I, you know, when he moved up to Min and I just got, you know, I go, Hey, I gotta, I gotta get into this whole wave thing. And at the time I was flying an old 1971 Kestrel, which is a probably a, you know, it's probably a 42 to one glide ratio, you know, an old, you know, old wing. But still it could do something. And anyway, I I, I had big bottles in that and started doing some big flights and that, and I finally had a 2000 kilometer, several 2000 kilometer flights in that.
So that got, that got quite a bit of publicity, you know, two,
Speaker 2 (16m 33s): You went 2000 K thermally not
Speaker 3 (16m 37s): Wave? No, no, that was, that was in wave. In the Wave, okay. Keole. Yeah. So, okay. Wow. You know, I I'd say that's incredible. Yeah. So it's
Speaker 2 (16m 45s): How many laps, how many times up and down is that?
Speaker 3 (16m 47s): Well, that was a three turn point, so I got a few records out of that. So that was a, a three turn point distance record. And I don't, I'm not quite sure how you guys have your record categorized, but we can have a a three turn point distance record where we have, we can pre, pre-clear three turn points. Yeah. And they have to be at least 10 kilometers apart. So we can go up and down what we call yo-yo up and down the Owens Valley. And we have straight up distance records. So I have one I almost made, made it to Rapid City, South Dakota on, on a downwind flight wave.
So
Speaker 2 (17m 18s): How far is that?
Speaker 3 (17m 22s): That was, that was probably seven, roughly 800 statute maybe,
Speaker 2 (17m 30s): You know. Geez. So you're, so you, and then that was declared goal kind of flight.
Speaker 3 (17m 35s): I declared it, but I didn't reach the goal. The goal was Rapid City. I landed, I landed just outside of Devil's Tower there at the, at that airport.
Speaker 2 (17m 44s): Amazing.
Speaker 3 (17m 45s): So, but what, what what's happening with all these flights is, you know, I'm going above 18,000 feet. I'm going up in the Class A airspace. So I have a, some letter agreements established with, with Oakland, salt Lake, Denver Center, and Seattle Center to go up high. So what I do that, is that
Speaker 2 (18m 1s): Something you can just declare on the day? Do you, you let them no, they day of or day before or
Speaker 3 (18m 6s): They, they want you to, they want you to call the, the day before you call the control center supervisor. Hey, I'm, I'm that idiot with the glider that's gonna try to go up high and getting everyone's weight and go down wind. So
Speaker 2 (18m 19s): Are you flying with farm? What are you flying with?
Speaker 3 (18m 22s): Yeah, I, I do have farm, but I've got, I'm 80 s b out and in with Okay. With transponder, you know, but glider, glider, it's all, you know, the farm stuff is really effective. So, so yeah. So I started getting into this, the wave stuff here and things started kind getting bigger and bigger. And then I got a duo, discus glider, which is a non flapped shura glider, probably, you know, I don't know, 44 to one glide ratio, very low wing loading, you know, and, and kinda limited, I I would say it's a, it's a very good cross country trainer.
But I started banging out some big rectors in that, you know, and then got several flights over 2000 kilometers in that. And then I realized, okay, I'm kind of tapped out with this thing. I can't go any further. It was equipped with lights, I was able to, I was able to legally fly at night, which is, which is okay, but to do like an overnight flights, like he, it's a whole different animal, you know. And then talk,
Speaker 2 (19m 20s): Talk about real, real quickly, just for, for those who, you know, we paragliders of course we, we understand the concept of wave, but we, I i I I don't know how much wind do you need to create wave and what, what are you looking for in the forecast when you're doing these 2000 Ks and, and how, and how many years ago was that? Was that
Speaker 3 (19m 40s): Decade for the what, 2000
Speaker 2 (19m 42s): When you're doing, starting doing the, in the Castrol and the
Speaker 3 (19m 45s): Yeah, that was probably 20 years ago. I mean, okay. We started getting some big flights and what
Speaker 2 (19m 49s): Does it, what do you need to what for that to set up and what, what is it like launching in that kind of Lee? What, so,
Speaker 3 (19m 55s): So what we're basically looking for is we basically looking for, you know, the, the key months for, for, for wave. I mean obviously all winter or long because any, anytime you have a low pressure system that pumps through. So I'm looking at kind of the 500 millibar charts, which is kind of at the 18,000 foot level, kind of see where the jet jet streams lining up with the jet axis and see what kind of flow that, that system that's bringing us. And, and, and it's for the Sierra, it's all gonna be prefrontal type wave. So we're looking at a southwesterly type flow. And so when that flow, when that jet stream starts kind of dipping south, that's when, you know, that's when it's like, okay, you know, it starts, it's like, it's like the buoy readouts, you know, it's like, oh man, the buoys are start, you know, it's start.
So you gotta gotta start watching this stuff and then, and coming nowadays with, yeah, it's like, here we go. So several days out I use a, an app called Sky Site. Ont, do you guys use Sky Site?
Speaker 2 (20m 46s): Yeah, yeah, we use it, it a lot.
Speaker 3 (20m 47s): It's phenomenal. Yeah. So gutters, yeah. Yeah. Matthew's awesome. So Sky Set runs 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM and, and I go, Matthew, you gotta run these models all night for me now because I'm doing these nighttime things. He goes, hi, no worries, night and you'll get the thing going all night. So I download all the stuff, but Sky set's been super, super good and I mean, I honestly have to say Sky Site's probably changed. Soaring and I don't know how it, how it has been for, for the paragliding world, but the accuracy and detail of wave, because typically we fly wave, if you can use markers, you know, like rotor clouds or, or or lenticular that, that's your, that's your key.
But the sky side, if we're flying in blue wave, you know, where there are no cloud markers, then you can download all the her data HR models for, for all the, the vertical velocity for, for the, the day of and then, and then have it on your phone and just basically flying that magenta area of lift. And it's, it's so accurate. I'm not saying a hundred percent of the time, but it's, it's, it allows you to fly so much further and I think more aggressively. 'cause you can go, okay, there's a dead zone right here, I'm gonna jam down. 'cause down near Mammoth it's, it's going off again or leave ironing, you know, so according to Sky, I'm
Speaker 2 (22m 1s): Gonna point, I'm gonna point it and we're gonna get it. We're just gonna, we're gonna fly through this kind of left less listy area fast. We're gonna punch it. We're, we're, we'll, we'll get there. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22m 11s): 'cause I did these, I did a lot of these big flights when I didn't have that. And so you're kind of blindly flying down, down,
Speaker 3 (22m 17s): Hopefully, you know, and you're just seeing this snow blowing off the peaks going, oh man, this is if I have to land. And Levi, which happened to me once and it was, that's, that's about as close to death I thought I was gonna get. I mean, it was, it was scary. I mean, I'd never seen, hold
Speaker 2 (22m 33s): On, we gotta hear this one. Okay. Take us through it. What happened? Well,
Speaker 3 (22m 37s): That was in the old Kessel. So this is before Sky site. I, I blast out a and then five in the morning and, and I get up to 24,000 feet, whatever. And, and I'm, I'm hauling ass south and everything's good and winds a loft are cranking. So I'm running it down towards Zio, south end of the Sierra, and I get a beam mammoth and mammoth. And that whole area gets kind of goofy with wave. And there's some, a lot of times there's some dead areas
Speaker 2 (23m 0s): Because, because of the past, because of the low area there mean that's just, we get hammered in that too, obviously. Yeah. The train flying in, that kind of wind,
Speaker 3 (23m 7s): The train gets goofy. Owen Owens Valley is spot on. It's almost like a no-brainer there down, down there. But I was heading south and, and I remember looking out and I was at 24, 20 6,000 feet looking at the tops of these, you know, like Mount Tom and these big peaks. I'm going, holy shit, it's blowing. I mean, you could see the snow just blowing like miles off the peaks, you know? And you know, mono Lake was just going off, you know, and just white capped. And so I, I get down south, down the Incar and come back north and I, I'm coming north out of the Owens Valley and I'm at 28,000 feet near shit.
I'm like near Mount Tom and I'm at 20,000 feet and I make a run. And I noticed the clouds, the Lulu had pushed way east and it was just, it was a different, completely different, like a sky, like two hours later. And I went, this is strange. So I I, and it wasn't really marked, so I went to where the lift was when I came south. I flew that same line coming north and it was the, on my very ome was head that's dumping. I was like, I was probably sinking 2000 feet a minute. I went from 28,000 feet at Mount Tom near, you know, south of Mammoth to being at Levi ironing at 3000 E g L in just, you know, and the, the whole
Speaker 2 (24m 24s): Model. So hold on, you're now, so you're in, you're, you're too far west, you're in the, you're in the dump. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24m 32s): Okay. Yeah. So the, it's what happened that, what happened is that the winds had strengthened so much. The jet had pushed south so quickly, and I think the winds just got so hellaciously strong. There's a point where they're too strong. You know what it did, it flattened out that wavelength. So instead of that big sharp propagation, you know, right five miles east of the spine of the mountains, it was like the, the wave was way east of Mile Lake. It was insane. It was like 15 miles down wind. Oh. And so, and I'm not gonna go with there because there's no place to land, you know, and surface winds were, the whole model lake was just, just, just foamed up.
So I'm at three, like 3000 feet a G l and I'm looking at Levi, that's my only landing option other than maybe a field on the edge of, you know, next to Mono Lake or something. And I went, holy shit. And that's the, I think the only time I ever wish I was in a car or on the ground, just not in a plane. And I mean, the wind, it's a 90 degree
Speaker 2 (25m 31s): Cross. Can you, can you land in that much wind in a, not really. Are you just gonna fly? Are you just gonna flop
Speaker 3 (25m 36s): Well's? That's the problem. It's, you know, you're kind of, you're, you're a test pilot now. And I, I I, I remember going, shit, how am I gonna deal with this? Because I'm landing in a 90 degree cross when it was, it must have been blowing 40, you know, 50 knots. It, it guss it was, it was just nuts. And so I set up, and I'm crabbing, you know, pointing at the runway and then I just, you know, you're just downwind at this 12,000 foot peaks and you just don't know what you're gonna get into with turbulence and all this other crap. And so I'm at about 2080 l now I'm downwind super high.
And all of a sudden, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm adding some nottage, you know, 'cause I'm adding some speed because I, you know, you just don't know what you're gonna hit. And so suddenly I'm on downwind at about 2000 a G l and the air, the whole bottom drops out. My, I mean, just the whole plane just drops my legs, which are hanging on underneath this instrument panel ripped through the pan, you know, just rip the panel out of the console so the console gets shoved up with a stick, you know, and so it's blocking the stick and I just throw the freaking panel forward and shove the stick over.
And my air speeded just went to like zero. And I went, holy shit, here we go. And I, I thought it was gonna die. And so I just dumped the nose over and just waited. And I probably lost, you know, a thousand feet in the whole thing just to get my air speeded back. I got my air speed back and I just went, holy shit. And I just, I just pointed for the runway because there's boulders all around the airport property there. So you know, you're not gonna, you're not gonna survive that. So I, alls I wanted to do was get that, that glider in the confines of the airport.
I didn't give a shit if it was gonna roll up in a ball or, or what. I just wanted to get it over the fence line, you know, into the property. And so I did that and I'm hauling ass now, you know, I got my airspeed back and, and turn on the final, get over the fence. And now I've got clipping along at a pretty good ground speed. And I'm, there's only so much wing down you can put into a cross line. So I, I landed kind of at a crab and I, you know, with my wing down and then I landed on the runway and then at about 2030, you know, 30 knots air speed, I couldn't, I couldn't keep them lighter lined up with the runway 'cause of the crosswind, you know, so it just went off into the sage brush and then came to a stop.
And then I'm like, holy shit. And so I'm like, hoping is anybody there? No one? It's, no, it's a ghost town. So, oh. So I'm sitting in the glider and so I start, so I've got my big expedition suit, you know, buddy of my climb, climb K two, he gave me a suit. So I was wearing that. So you got all this shit in the cock that you're just jammed up on this thing. So I'm, I'm trying to undo my, as I'm trying to undo all this stuff, the whole glider picks up off the ground, oh god. With 'cause of the cross wind. 'cause the right wing was kind of, it was, the wings were semi level 'cause they're resting on the sagebrush.
But it picked up just enough, like three or four feet off the ground and slid down wind and settled down again. I went, holy shit, it's gonna flip me over with this thing in it, you know, and then that's what's gonna kill me. So I just opened the canopy, chucked it up, and then held onto it and was able to climb out and keep it from getting ripped outta my hands. And I ran to the upward side of the wing and then I just, I just got, got on top of the wing and then the up upward side just kind of laid on it. And then I just remember just getting pelted with just gravel.
It, it was blowing that hard. And then about 10 minutes later and I go and I'm thinking, what am I gonna do here? 'cause there's no one around, I mean, there's no one the option, no one's around. So I go, at some point I'm gonna have to let go of this thing. And the gliders gone. It's, it's tows. So about 10 minutes later, this truck comes up and it's this guy Dennis, he owns the mobile station down there at Levi, right. And he's got a Cessna, like a 180 or something in the hangar. So he comes up, I mean, we could barely hear each other 'cause the wind's blowing. So what, you know, we're screaming.
I'm like, yeah, I need to get, just get a car on the upland side of his wing so it doesn't flip over. So he goes, okay, I'll get the big truck. And so, so yeah, so Dennis gets all these Mexican guys and they know, they, they come, come down with, it's like a watering truck or something like that. And they, they block the upwind side of the glider and then we kind of like, okay, now, you know, let's got our, you know, wiss together. So we got like six guys that lift it up out the sage brush and we just kept the truck on the upwind side of the wings. We pushed it back towards the, towards the hanger and we tied it down behind the hanger on the downwind side.
And, and the wing tips were hanging out the wind. And you're lucky those guys
Speaker 2 (30m 5s): Were around.
Speaker 3 (30m 6s): Oh shit. So we get, I go,
Speaker 2 (30m 8s): How
Speaker 3 (30m 8s): Did you see me? He goes, he goes, I didn't see, he goes, he goes, one of my cooks was standing at the window overlooking, you know, the mono lake going, Hey boss,
Speaker 2 (30m 15s): Look
Speaker 3 (30m 16s): At the fucking wind is blowing. So it was just, I mean, it was like, it was like the middle Pacific. The whole mono lake was just a sea of foam, you know? And then he saw the glider, geez. And he goes, Hey boss, look in the airplane. And Dennis went, holy shit, that guy's gonna be in trouble. So that's when they got in the truck. Luckily they saw me. So that day semis rolled over. I mean, trees were blown down and, and it was just, it was, it was hell. But yeah,
Speaker 2 (30m 43s): The, these, these days with things like Sky site and being able to tap, you know, if you got, I'm assuming sometimes you have cell cut. What do you have up in the, when when you're really high? You're not getting cell anymore, right?
Speaker 3 (30m 54s): No, no, not really. I
Speaker 2 (30m 57s): Do, we start to lose it at 17, 18. I Yeah, I know you guys, yeah,
Speaker 3 (31m 2s): You're right. The tower. Yeah, we, we do, it's kind of, it's kind of in and out. I've got a Garmin inReach so I can text with the, with the inReach. And then I also have a SAT phone. So I've got like on the downwind flights, I've got the satphone capability. I'll stay in touch with a, a buddy of mine who's a retired meteorologist, a glider guy too. 'cause he can give me, he's gotta give me weather updates. Like when I blow, when I launch outta here, I got, get got up at 28,000 feet, then I go down wind, I gotta stay clear of the Fallon restricted aerospace. So I, I head out along the ranges basically heading out towards the rubies.
And so once I get to rubies, oh good. Yep. I'm talking to Salt Lake then and rubies just generating Monster wave. So if I get the rubies and I can get a big climb out of there and then run, make a run towards Logan, Utah out towards Bear Lake and then Bear Lake, that whole range just west of Bear Lake generates big wave. And then climb up there and then go off to the wind rivers and then the big horns and then shit. It's so
Speaker 2 (32m 6s): Oh my God. So, but when you're back to this near death thing, you know, when obviously really scary these that's 20 years ago these days are, are, can you just totally avoid that or are you still taking that kinda risk? I mean, are is that something that had you had what you have now, technology wise Skylight, would you have known that? Would you, would you have known not to go?
Speaker 3 (32m 31s): I mean, still seems like, yeah, I think Skylight, skylight will show that they'll Okay. Sky, I think sky's, yeah. I mean Skylight will show that. And nowadays a lot of guys go, well I'm not gonna take off today. 'cause the forecast for the winds to be, you know, gusting the 40, 50 knots. You know, when you, I go, well if, if you, if you base it off, if, if you just don't fly every time. 'cause it's the forecast is gonna be, it may or may not be that. I don't, I don't know. But I, I said if, if, yeah, if I just didn't fly every time, 'cause the forecasts are gonna be gusty and I didn't, it was uncomfortable, I, you'd never fly.
So as long as you have alternates, you know, like something that's into the wind, whether it's Carson or going down wind and landing in Hawthorne or something, as long as you have some, some bailout points and then, you know, then you have options. You know. But you,
Speaker 2 (33m 18s): You said something, you said something interesting early on that I, I don't know that I understand. You said usually it's winter 'cause you're looking for the lows and they come through with the southeast, southwest. What I what I don't sorry, sorry, sorry. Southwest. Yeah. Yeah. The, so you know, you, you've got your, you've got your, you know, antip cyclonic winds and so you're, you're, you're, you're, you're frying you're flying pre-frontal frontal on that. But is that long enough for you? I mean, usually when I think of a low, it's coming through pretty fast as opposed to, you know, like, like a really sustained high pressure westerly I would think would be more, well this, this the flight you did was in June, was that a big low or was that
Speaker 3 (33m 58s): No, that was a, yeah, that was a very unusual situation to 'cause to have a low come down this far. I mean, getting up a low hitting Seattle or Washington in the summer that, that happens. But for it to reach down this deep down this far south, very unusual. Okay. But it, it, it's a really good question you pose because there are times where lows are too, the trough is too deep and it's too, too rapid a front. I'm not saying you won't get weighed, you'll get weighed, but just a very short period of time. So you go, okay, what can I do with that?
Is there anything, kinda do a big flight so you might just pass on it or just go monkey around. And I, I've done flights like that where it's just a, my, my last flight was just a really mediocre load. Just like, hmm, yeah, it's, it's normally it wouldn't fly, but I still banged out like 1500 kilometers, you know, on that, that day. So, and I think once again, so as
Speaker 2 (34m 49s): Long as, as long as you don't get jaded and you're, you're just Chasing a 3000 k, you can go out on those shorter Yeah. Those deeper troughs and still fly wave and have fun. But it's just, it's gonna go through too fast to break any records. Is that right? Yeah. Do I have that, do I understand that Right? Okay. Y
Speaker 3 (35m 3s): Y you're right. 'cause I mean they're, they're, the classic situations is to get a prolonged, like a really kind of a shallow low that comes in and just feeds energy for like two days. And we get that maybe maybe once or twice a year, you know, so for me to, what
Speaker 2 (35m 21s): About these, what about, you know, like last winter when we had just, what, what did California get? 11 atmospheric rivers. Yeah. Does that work? Are those good? Are they, those are too
Speaker 3 (35m 31s): Natural. So those see those end up getting too wet. Too wet because it's just too much moisture and it's just, yeah, it, it, it once, you know, once they have, there's a point where they have so much energy and, and so much moisture in 'em, they just cross the Sears and they end up, you know, a lot of times these lows were flying it's prefrontal systems. You the whole west side of, of the seas just getting hammered and you know, you're on the, on the lease side and protected by essentially the Sierras or whatever's holding back that weather. But like last year there, there weren't too many flyable days where you could have done anything big because these things were just coming in and just pumping moisture in it.
You can't, you can't fly in that once, once that low, that jet access get ends up kind of hitting like men area and going south and you're, you urin area of too much moisture. So that's why looking at the, looking at the 500 millibar, we call it the 506, the 5 64 line, that kind of, you know, marks the jet access. So you, and then once again sky site, you go okay Sky site showing the moisture pumping through and sometimes it'll pulse where the wave will shut down here and you can be down the Owens Valley just banging out turn points running up and down and then, then it, you know, it'll pulse and then open up here in the afternoon.
That's happened with me too where I, I sneak back home, you know, but you know, there's a lot of experimenting and, and there there's still a lot to learn with this stuff. And, and that's what makes this stuff so fascinating. This just like with you guys, it's, it never gets boring. 'cause there's always, you know, there's always something that is, you always find to go, what the, what the hell was that about? You know, that one thermal or you know, I got low there, why was you, that cloud wasn't working? You know, what the hell's going on here? And
Speaker 2 (37m 13s): So I I mean I I and I I wanna talk about that too. But the, the, as I understand it with you guys with sail planes, you know, they're, you have a lot more knowledge 'cause it's just been going on a lot longer. Yeah. But what we talk about in, in paragliding is that, you know, the, the amount of stuff to be done in this part of the world is literally mind boggling. Yeah. Yeah. 'cause we've barely touched the surface. Right. Where is in Europe, you know, our f a i triangles, you're talking, you were talking about how do we measure our distances, you know, our f a Iran same as yours, you know?
Okay. Yeah. Those are the, those are the B'S knees. That's where you get all the points. Yeah. That's what we wanna do. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a lot more technical and difficult than just going downwind Right. One way. Right. So, you know, coming home is, is way more sexy. But in, in Europe, you know, the, it'll really be a huge surprise if somebody flies a huge triangle that's not just a little bit bigger than what a, what 50 people have already done. You know? Right. There's, there's nothing there is just, wow. That's never been done.
I mean, in the Alps most things have been done. They're just getting bigger, the gliders are getting better. Yeah. You know, people are figuring it out. We're flying faster, you know, but like what, or what's his name the Klaus is doing Yeah. In sail planes over the med, you know, I'm sure for you guys that's just like, whoa, that's a, that's a big deal. But here in the west, is it the same with you guys? Are are, are is there just, have you barely scratched the surface or I just making things bigger. Okay. Yeah. That's
Speaker 3 (38m 48s): Very no, I I I think it's, I think the s scratch the surface is being scratched. Especially now the, the capability of of doing the, using the MVGs. Yeah. 'cause now it's
Speaker 2 (38m 60s): Describe describe what that is. We're gonna get to the big five. It depends. Those you don't know what, what'd you just say? Yeah,
Speaker 3 (39m 4s): So, so the night vision, the MVGs are the night vision goggles. And I, I, you know, you're not gonna vision this thing, but these are, these are what I'm, I'm using. And so these are actual, these are used by the actual mil. This is used by the military. These are, these are the no shit. These are like 18 grand a piece for these things. You know, they're, wow. But it's, it's, it's insane. I mean, using these things and you feel once you get the experience with him, it's, I mean that's as about as close to flying off the boat as possible.
You know, when you take off on a pitch black runway, I took my buddy up a few weeks ago and he's another FedEx guy and he was just going, holy shit. 'cause he was sitting in the back and he, I the first, first touch and go, because I've got the, the jet put the glider, he just put the goggles up. He goes, it's pitch black. He goes, I can't see a, he goes, I can't see a thing. He just heard the wheel touchdown. He goes, oh shit, I guess so the next he put the goggles down, he goes, oh my God, that's insane. You know, we're flying along the ridges, really, you know?
Right, right along the Kingsbury at fricking 11 o'clock at night and then it's pitch black. I go put the goggles up. He goes, holy shit, we're dead. You know? I go, yeah, that's, so I think with the, with the goggles now, with, with Wave and, and Ridge, 'cause Ridge will work at night too. And that's where I think you guys, 'cause I, you know, when you said you wanna talk to me, I'm going, God, we, we gotta figure something out with these paragliders something to to, to get these guys to, to start smash this. Like, like dudes taking off off the Appalachians, you know, with NDGs paragliders and, and just doing a massive flight and just blowing everyone's mind.
And I think that stuff is possible, you know, with you guys. Hold
Speaker 2 (40m 44s): On, hold on. I gotta, I gotta somehow silence all that last bit. I I'm the only one that heard that. Wow. Really? Oh my God, that's
Speaker 3 (40m 52s): Amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40m 53s): Yeah. I, you know, I keep thinking how it even occurred to us.
Speaker 3 (40m 57s): I I, you know, I, 'cause I I
Speaker 2 (40m 58s): Don't know why it would totally work. I've
Speaker 3 (40m 60s): Always been intrigued with, with, you know, the paragliding and the hang gliding stuff and you know, I see you guys down in the Sierra and I just go, just you rip pull up in the thermals, like, man, that's cool. These dude's hanging out there. And I think it's kickass.
Speaker 2 (41m 11s): Yeah. The, the, the, the only thing is of course is we can't fly in that kind of wind. You know, we have to be,
Speaker 3 (41m 17s): And that's why it could
Speaker 2 (41m 18s): Be wave, it would have to just be rich. Yeah. I mean, Richland
Speaker 3 (41m 21s): Could be great. I think I, I honestly think something with Ridge, if you now with yeah with Wave I, I just, I've been thinking like constantly about how you guys can do something with Wave, but I don't think it's safe.
Speaker 2 (41m 35s): They have done it in hang gliders. I don't know if you saw that Johnny Duran, a Red Bull athlete flew in wave in a hang glider down in Australia and, you know, it was, it was pretty wild. I mean the, the footage
Speaker 3 (41m 47s): And that's mild wave there, you know,
Speaker 2 (41m 49s): To Exactly. Yeah. It's wild. I don't know. I don't know that we could do it. See, well, that, that's what I wanted to ask you. So next we're, we're, we're gonna get to this insane flight, but while we're still back here, the, what is, what does taking off look like? How do you get started? How do, how does it work? How, how do you get going? You, you're talking about, you know, you were 24,000 feet back in this kind of, by today's standards. So,
Speaker 3 (42m 15s): So the typical scenario with w with, you know, whether you, whether you tow or self launch, you know, I can self launch now 'cause you know, I've got the, I've got the jet that allows me to take off most the, the Jet's very unique. Typically you're going to either tow up or self launch up to about three or 4,000 a G L. And from that involves heading west from the airport, you know, four or five miles basically towards the Kingsbury grade and you know, at 3 95.
And then climbing up to about three or 4,000 a G l most of the times. And then getting into the wave right there, working your way up and then getting into that laminar flow. And then, you know, off, off you go. So how
Speaker 2 (42m 58s): Long does that take?
Speaker 3 (43m 2s): Like on that big flight I did, it was, I probably ran the motor for like seven minutes, climbed to about really 30, 3500 A G L and then shut it down and got right into the wave and then, and was able to, I I was using Sky Site because, you know, I had the MVGs, it was, it was, it was dark outside obviously. So I had the MVGs, no, no markers. So I went right to where Sky Site, there was just a little tiny pocket of where Sky Site said there was gonna be a wave. I just motored right to it. Boom. There it was shut the motor down stoves and the fuselage doors closed.
Now you're totally clean. And then, you know, our flight recorders, that's when or flight recorders will monitor either they'll monitor that engine noise and so it'll say, okay, that's when you're soaring. The beginning of your soaring begins when that motor is shut down. So it's either through vibration or, or sound. So,
Speaker 2 (43m 54s): And when you, when you cut off the motor, or if you're, you don't have a motor and you, and you, you cut off your toe and you're in, you're in the way. What does it feel like? What, what does it, how long does it take to get from 3000 h e l? Well,
Speaker 3 (44m 7s): It depends. Sometimes you end up, a lot of times you end up in pretty rough air kind of in the rotor sometimes. And you have sometimes working up into that rotor, there's other times where you can climb right up and it's just you, you, because for minute you'll typically fly through the rotor. So you get the, the shit knocked outta you flying through the rotor, and then once you punch through that to the west of that, or to the windward side, you get into this, it's glass smooth. It's just totally glass smooth, laminar smooth really. I mean, you can put a glass of wine on the dash to fly the whole day that way, you know, in that smooth air really.
But if you get down, like in the, in the Sierra, 'cause since Thes Valley, since the Sierra is so high down there, you, if you get down to 16 or 17,000 feet in, in, in the Owens Valley, you can be hitting rotor already there. And it just, it's the Owens Valley is violent, you know, it just gets ugly. So I try to stay high. We
Speaker 2 (45m 4s): Always say it's one of the most violent places on Earth.
Speaker 3 (45m 6s): Yeah. It's, and I
Speaker 2 (45m 8s): For you guys too.
Speaker 3 (45m 9s): Oh yeah. I mean especially with winds like that, it's, yeah, it's, it's, you know, there's stuff that you, you know, you just, your palms get sweaty just talking about, you know, but well,
Speaker 2 (45m 22s): What kind of, you know, so I'm just trying to give those who don't, you know, I've never been in a sailplane, but
Speaker 3 (45m 28s): You gotta, well you gotta come out with it, dude.
Speaker 2 (45m 30s): You know, I've done, I've got,
Speaker 3 (45m 32s): I swear to God, you, you'll, it'll blow your mind. I be the
Speaker 2 (45m 34s): Best. I'll, I will never go to sleep. I will keep it rocking buddy. We, I promise you I'll be the best copilot ever. I have got to do this. It sounds amazing. And those of you are listening when we get to this flight, it's gonna blow your mind. But Yeah,
Speaker 3 (45m 48s): When you, when you feel that, when you see the energy out there, when you're, I mean, we're indicating, like in the, in the Owens Valley, you're indicating 140 knots and you're going up 1500 feet a minute at 20 something thousand feet. Like, holy shit. Kidding me. Seriously? I mean, last time I was down there I was, I was, I had to stay below 18. 'cause I didn't, they didn't gimme clearance because they were working a bunch of traffic out in there. Joshua trees going up, or Barstow 'cause the thunderstorms. And the guy said, I I, I can't give you your sage two standby, standby. And, and I'm literally, it's 17 five at 141 knots indicated, which is my Maxine, to get that, that altitude.
And, and I had the spoilers out trying to stay below 18,000 feet. And I'm just, just going up, you're going
Speaker 2 (46m 32s): 170 miles an hour. That's
Speaker 3 (46m 34s): Unbeliev.
Speaker 2 (46m 35s): So, so what, you know what, I'm trying to give people a sense for what this feels like when you're in the, when you're not in the glassy stuff and you're in the, you know, is it, is it when you're in a commercial jet landing at Denver on one of those really, really bad days and thunderstorms everywhere? Is that what it feels like? Does it, or is it worse? How, how much, how much can these planes that you're flying handle,
Speaker 3 (46m 57s): They're really strong. What what you don't wanna do is fly into that kind of turbulence. Like, and, and that the only turbulence you'll find associated with mountain wave is, is that rotor. And that rotor will be basically from the ridge top level, potentially down to the surface. You know? So, okay. Once you get above, once you get above that ridge top level, so let's just say from he, you know, in this area, from, from here down to the Owens Valley, if you're above 14, 15,000 feet, you're not gonna hit any of, of that rotor.
But if you like, fall outta the wave and you have to reestablish yourself into wave, you might fall down below the ridge tops. And that's happened to me plenty of times in those soft spots between like Bridgeport and Bishop, you know, where you're like, oh shit, here we go. You know? And you're, you're 24,000 feet next time, next thing you know, because the sink rates, you can hit some heavy sink in a wave too. You know where you're going down. Sure. Two, 3000 feet a minute. So it's, it's, oh, it's, it's as, it's as bad going down as it is up.
So if you get in the down part of that wave, let's say, let's say you get, you drift too far down wind, or you're, it's blue wave and the sky site, let's say sky site's wrong. You're, you're fishing around and you're like, all of a sudden, holy shit, now I'm, now I'm in 2000 feet a minute sink. You're like, oh shit, you always work in your up wind side, but you might be end below that ridge top level. And that's happening to me, where you, you, you make a big jump in a dead zone and, and now you're, you're 13,000 feet and just like, just getting the shit knocked outta you, you know, really.
And you're working that rotor trying to get back into the rotor. 'cause that rotor will have up and down, you know, so the air's going. So you'll try to find more up than down and then reestablish yourself back in west of the road or into the wave and then punch, punch to the west and get into that lanar flow. So
Speaker 2 (48m 49s): When you, when you say you're trying to work it, are you working it like a thermal? Are you turning Yeah. Are you turning circles?
Speaker 3 (48m 55s): It depends on the wind sometimes. So with our, with our computers now, we can see our track over the ground. So if I see myself, you know, obviously, you know, sometimes we're dealing with 60, 70 knot winds at, you know, 14,000 feet or whatever, but you make a turn down wind, you, you get jet. And so a lot of times you kind of, you finagle it, you know, you go, okay, maybe ss turns a work or if you can remain stationary, you know, that's the key. And a lot of times with wave the wind's strong enough to where you can, you can literally, you'll have a, a zero ground speed and be going up, you know, 2000 feet a minute.
It's just, it's bizarre. Bizarre. Really? Yeah. Oh yeah. Whoa. I mean, last time I flew I had a minus a negative eight knot ground speed, you know, so I'm, I'm climbing, getting pushed backwards. It's so, yeah, I mean, it's not
Speaker 2 (49m 41s): Paragliding conditions. No.
Speaker 3 (49m 43s): Holy
Speaker 2 (49m 44s): Cow. Oh my, what's your, what's your trim speed on that glider?
Speaker 3 (49m 51s): All right, we're, now we're talking paragliding lingo here. Trim speed. Well,
Speaker 2 (49m 55s): What's so, so dead stick dead air. What, what do you, what what, so we're
Speaker 3 (50m 1s): Probably about 60 knots is, we call it six knots, like our best L over D speed, you know, it's like six. Okay. Roughly 60 knots. Okay. The thing in, like, in, in, in these conditions, we fly out here in the Sierra. I mean, a lot of times, you know, you're full stick forward and just you're, you're going v and e and it's just, you, you're just literally, you're just, you're cooking over the ground and you end up on a downwind leg. You know, I've had, I've had over 200, 200 knot ground, 250 knot, I think ground speed.
It's crazy. God dang. So
Speaker 2 (50m 34s): That's incredible. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (50m 36s): Yeah. You get, it's, it's a completely different ballgame, you know, but, you know, I mean, it's, it's all relative, you know, paragliding, soaring, you know, it's going mountain bike and road bike, that's
Speaker 2 (50m 48s): All. Yeah. But man, that's, I mean, I've never, I've never, you know, I've flown of course with a ton of sail planes in the Alps. You know, we, we do a lot of thermally with sail planes and, you know, they come through and often they're racing from Slovenia all the way through into Germany. And, you know, they, they do everything that we do, but much bigger. They're just going way faster. Yeah. It looks, but you know, when I, when I hear the stories e even friends of mine that, that fly sail planes that also fly paragliders, they always kinda, they don't get that excited about it. They're always kind of, yeah.
It's, you know, it's, it's, it's cool we go farther, but I mean, listening to your stories, it is just, this doesn't seem like normal sail planning to me. I have heard these kind of stories.
Speaker 3 (51m 29s): It's a little different. Yeah. I mean, I, I I, I do a lot of the thermal stuff, you know, and I, and I love it, but it's, it's when I start comparing my big thermal flights to the wave flights, like I'm working my ass off in the thermal stuff, you know, and I'm, it's just like, shit, I'm just spending all this time circling, you know? And then you, you make a big long run spending half the time going
Speaker 2 (51m 49s): Long way,
Speaker 3 (51m 50s): You're like, yeah, exactly. Like, this isn't too efficient, you know? But, and that's what I think is, is pretty cool with the wave stuff. It's just the, the energy that is out there, it is insane. I mean, there was, back in the Sierra wave project, there's a story of a guy, a P 38, you know, that got in a mountain wave near Bishop and he shut both motors down and P 38 climbed like 30,000 feet with no motors and a P 38.
Speaker 2 (52m 18s): What?
Speaker 3 (52m 18s): Yeah.
Speaker 2 (52m 19s): God, man, that's incredible.
Speaker 3 (52m 21s): So, I mean, it's just, the energy's just nuts. But
Speaker 2 (52m 25s): How do you deal, how do you deal with ice? Is that a thing for you guys? Or is that,
Speaker 3 (52m 30s): You mean a lot of canopy icing and stuff like that? But I, you try to, you don't wanna fly in. 'cause you know, once you get that wing iced up, it's not coming off, you know, until you get down low. But we have had issues with icing. But what I do now is I put a, like an inner layer of plexiglass. So it forms like two layers and there's a, there's like an air pocket between the inner layer plexiglass in the canopy. And that air pocket gets warm enough where no ice, no ice forms. And it's, it works magically.
Speaker 2 (53m 1s): So, okay, so you don't, but you don't have to worry so much on your, I'm not an airplane ailerons or whatever, cables or however the flaps and all that stuff. Yeah, you,
Speaker 3 (53m 12s): You do. I mean, but you'll only, you'll only get into that stuff if you fly. If you're high enough and it's cold enough, that won't be an issue. But if you're, let's say probably in the high teens or, you know, in the, you know, mid teens, high teens and low t you know, low twenties, and you fly in the cloud, then you'll, you'll probably get, have some issues.
Speaker 2 (53m 32s): I gotta come fly with you, man. That's just, this stuff's incredible. Yeah. This just isn't something we can touch.
Speaker 3 (53m 37s): Yeah. I think the, the wave stuff would be interesting for you. 'cause 'cause you guys don't do that. For you to see the, just the amount of energy. That's it. It's, it's mind boggling, you know? And it's, it's not Australian wave, it's not European wave. It's just, it's just big stuff, you know, it's like pipeline or y a or nazare or something, you know? It's, it's, yeah, the big stuff.
Speaker 2 (53m 59s): Biggest to the big. It's the big stuff. So, so tell me a, a again, I keep alluding, sorry, listener, but this is so fascinating. I keep alluding to this big flight. We're gonna get there. But the, tell me about your aircraft. 'cause the, I have some sailplane friends when I, when I told them, Hey, I'm gonna get Gordon on the show, what do I need to know? They were all really excited about your plane. What, why is your plane so special?
Speaker 3 (54m 22s): Well, there are only four in the world that are, and there's nothing speci special about the sailplane itself. It's, it's a sheer acus glider ma manufactured in Germany. It's kind of the, it's the Ferrari for two seaters right now. You know that that's, that's being built. It's probably the most popular high performance two-seater out there. So the story on my glider is that about five years ago by a guy by the name of Dennis Tito, he spent a week up in the space station with a, went up with the Russians, you know, the guys, you know, adventure, big money.
Yeah. He ordered four orcas from Germany, brought him over here. He was very fascinated with the wave stuff and, and flying wave. He said, okay, I want a jet engine put on him on, on all four of 'em. He had that done. And oh, he told the manufacturer, he told Shamp Perth, he said, Hey, I want, I want you to do some, some redesigning or figure something out so I can fly at a higher air speed than, than you manufactured air, you know, the placarded air speeds.
So I want basically a faster glider. I want the jet engine, I want auto flaps on it so I don't have to monkey with the flaps. And then I also want all the instruments coated for, for night vision goggles. And I want night vision goggles. And so he had four of these gliders made up, brought 'em over here. His intent was to have two down Argentina to fly the wave down there. And so he had two in Menon, and I think he shipped a couple down there to Argentina, did some big flights down there and up here.
And then after about four years, he goes, I'm done. And so he sold
Speaker 2 (56m 6s): Two to why, why was he, why was he done? I
Speaker 3 (56m 8s): Don't know. Just no idea. I got
Speaker 2 (56m 10s): Box.
Speaker 3 (56m 11s): Yeah, I guess so. So two were sold to Airbus. So Airbus bought two for doing research and things like that. Those two are still beard menon. And so these aren't part of, of the per land project? Absolutely. Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, no, technically no. But they're owned by, they are owned by Airbus. Some of the per land guys are using one of the glide gliders for contrail testing, that kind of stuff. So it's kind of, oh, torn up. And then the last two were for sale. And the buddy of mine was doing all this flying with Dennis Tito.
And so when that, those last two, you know, we're, we're up for sale about a little over a year ago, I'm like, holy shit, I gotta, this is the, this is the ultimate machine. It's like, there's nothing more you could do to sweeten up a glider for, for high altitude, long distance, fast wave flights. And so I jumped on the, the newest one of the four, Dennis Tito sold it to me. And then it was game on right off the bat, you know, so, so the first year I, this is the first year I've had it, you know, and, you know, doing these flights.
So, you know, I've got, I don't know, a bunch of 2000 kilometer flights, that big one. And then I've got a bunch of thousand kilometer flights and thermals. And so yeah, it's just been, so, I just, I just hit the ground running with this thing. And then I finally got called on the NDGs. 'cause you gotta be signed off with the night vision goggles. So I got a guy to sign me off with that. And then Tim Gardner, who, who flew with Dennis Tito, he was called on the MVGs. And, and we did some night stuff here. 'cause it's a whole different ballgame.
You know, it's, it's, you gotta, you gotta be kind of on your game with flying at night, you know, with the night vision goggles, because everything's field of vision, you know, your field of views really narrowed down. So it's, it's, it's d different ballgame, but once you get used to it, it's, it's cool. But anyway, I'm, I'm going for this, this is the machine. And I just like, started like going, all right, you know, so the first, the first year it was pretty much doing, I, I've, and I've landed night and stuff like that. But then on that June 19th flight, I'm like, okay, I, I think I feel comfortable enough for these goggles to try a, at least an overnight flight.
I had no intention of flying that far. I just called my partner. I sold half the share a partner. My, my a partner of mine that was a FedEx guy, but not yet rated and glider. So he had, so his first flight in the glider was like, well, a thousand kilometer thermal flight with me. This second one was another thousand. Then he did a 2000 kilometer wave flight. So, wow. So I called him up on this flight, On June 19th, go, Hey man, I, I said, the wave's gonna line up. It's just, it, it's not classic, it's just, it's gonna be an okay wave day.
But if you want to try to just do an overnight flight and, you know, or just fly all night. 'cause my main goal was to kind of see how I was gonna be able to handle the temperatures up at altitude in the twenties at night. 'cause typically it will get unbearably cold, you know? 'cause I've, I've flown at night, but not for long, for, not for hours, but it gets wicked cold. So like, let's see what we can do here. And so that was kind of the, the whole purpose of that flight was just to kind of fly, you know, at night till like noon.
And then I, I texted Matthew Scudder Sky, I'm like, Hey Matt, check out the weather. I mean, I, what are you thinking? He goes, he goes, yeah, the wave's gonna shut down at about two o'clock. I go, that's what I'm thinking. I said, well, can you run the models all night? No, in the afternoon. In the, the afternoon. Okay. So fi it figure it was gonna go from evening, you know, all night. And then till two o'clock. So, and it was not a classic day, it was on a scale of one to 10, it was probably a, maybe a five. So, you know, after I'd land, I'd go, holy shit, on a good day, man, imagine what you can do.
You know? No
Speaker 2 (1h 0m 0s): Way. No way. So this is just an average day.
Speaker 3 (1h 0m 4s): Yeah, that was, I probably would not have what I probably would not even have flown. It was more of like, Hey, let's just go chill all night. Or, you know, 'cause it, 'cause it was June 19th. I go, well shit, it's, it's warm. It's not wicked cold. It's not winter, it's, you know, I go, let's just, it, it's gonna be tame as far as temperature temperatures goes. Let's so Bruce, if you wanna go up, we'll go do some N V G work, you know? And so it turned out to be, you know, we went beyond the, do
Speaker 2 (1h 0m 28s): You have some kind of heater in there? Do you have any No. Do you have any warm air blowing on you or anything?
Speaker 3 (1h 0m 32s): Oh God, it's, no, just because you're just, you know, you're,
Speaker 2 (1h 0m 35s): What do you, what do you wrap up in? What are you wearing?
Speaker 3 (1h 0m 38s): So some guys ask about the electric stuff, you know, electric clothing. The problems with that is, the problem with that is if, first of all it fails and you don't have the, the backup, in other words, the thick stuff, it's game over. It's like, oh, we're done. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Might as well land. So I wear a big climbing, you know, that, you know, expedition suit and then some layers underneath. The problem with that is if you get down low and you end up in a thermal situation that happened with me, ugh. Like when I flew my, cus I flew from here to Steamboat, Colorado, and I ended up over the Wasatch, well wave, completely fell apart.
It was like, now I'm down thermals and I'm just pouring sweat in the cockpit, you know? And just like, holy shit, I'm just trying to stay hydrated and, you know, so that can turn into a, a bad situation if you end up low, you know. But this flight, we suited up and, and you know, it's like, yeah, what time do you wanna meet? Yeah. You know, it was father's, father's day the day before. So my dad was in town. So we had, we had dinner and we just kind of moseyed out to the airport like, yeah, shit, we still gotta put gas in the thing.
And so we just took our time and took off at two 30 and just why two 30? It's just, 'cause it was two, I don't know, it was just two 30. And it was so, I was so unprepared for the flight. Not unprepared, but I was, I I didn't really have big ambitions. I mean, so much so that I didn't, I didn't call Oakland Center for a clearance until we're actually pulling the glider out with the car. We're, and I just called Oakland Center at like two in the morning, like, Hey man, I'm, I'm gonna be launching it like half an hour. He goes, half you in a glider?
I go, yeah. He goes, he goes, I got megs. And he goes, huh? He goes, I said, I'm looking for a clearance so we can get, get a clearance in the Class A. He goes, Hmm. He goes, well we're not too busy. He goes, that shouldn't be a problem. He goes, lemme go to the floor and talk to the controllers and let 'em know you're, you know, what's your call sign? You know, one eighty nine Del Tango. It's like, okay, I'll let him know. So as soon as we climbed up and got to two 14,000 feet, they gave me an I F R clearance said go have at it. So it was a really windy evening, you know, winds are blowing.
It was almost too much for, you know, too much cross wind for takeoff. But, you know, we did it on NDGs one, a pitch black runway and then
Speaker 2 (1h 2m 51s): From Menen.
Speaker 3 (1h 2m 52s): Yeah, yeah. Then. And so we, like I said, we climbed up about 30, you know, three th 3,500 A G L or something. And the, the little funny thing is, you know, your, your suit, it's just the two of us. I don't have a support team. It's just like, let's get our shit and throw it in the airplane. So you didn't have, you
Speaker 2 (1h 3m 10s): Didn't have ground, you didn't have a ground person?
Speaker 3 (1h 3m 12s): No, no. I just like a weather
Speaker 2 (1h 3m 13s): Person.
Speaker 3 (1h 3m 14s): No, we're just, you know, once yeah, it was just supposed to be, you had
Speaker 2 (1h 3m 18s): Low expectations, you're just gonna
Speaker 3 (1h 3m 19s): Go cruise. No, you know, and I never have a, I I just, I'm always kind of a one man show anyway. You know, I don't have a big support team, you know, launching me run the wings. I just let the, you know, do my thing and keep it simple. So anyway, Bruce the guy that was flying with, I put him in the front seat 'cause I'm six five and there's more room in the back seat. And so he never, he never used nvg. So, so, so I had to give him a tutorial on, you know, do this, don't, don't do this. You know, make sure to, you know, he, so he was clueless on the nvg.
He'd never used it, you know, so Wow. He sits in the front seat and I said, just get, and you know, you, you're putting 10 pounds of shit in a five pound bag, you know, it's one of those deals. So he's, I said, just put all your stuff on the ground here, so keep in mind it's, it's pitch black. So I got the truck running the lights on, you know, lighting up the fuselage. And so he's, he gets in and he's trying to get squared away and the wind's blowing and like crazy. And so I start handing him all this shit on his lap and he's, you know, he's not used to these big flights. He's not used to the glider thing, you know.
So he's, I get down to the last few items and there's this blue cube thing, and I go, Bruce, what the fuck is this? He goes, oh, it's a Bluetooth speaker. I thought we could maybe listen to some music and we're up there. I go, are you shitting me? What do you think this is? You know, got some Michael t going here. What? So I go, we don't have the room for this crap. So, you know, and he had a big, you know, it's like he was, you know, had this five pound bag of nuts. And I'm like, do what?
Do what is this naked and afraid or something? So, so anyway, I get him in the front seat and I get in the back and so it, it's kind of chaotic 'cause the winds are blowing. I get the motor started and we start, you know, we start a takeoff roll and, you know, it's noisy with that, that jet going and all, and, and we get to about 20 knots and it's a big enough runway. So, so we get to about 20 knots and hear this flapping bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And I go, oh shit, what's that? So I, you know, brought the throttle back to idle, stopped the airplane, and I, I had to figure it was my shoulder harness.
Sure enough, the shoulder harness was hanging outside of the canopy and banging on the leaning edge of the wing. So I opened the canopy up, you know, and then strapped in. And I just got, I, I just got com you know, first of all, fatigue, I was up all day, you know, I got up at seven o'clock that morning. So I was, I'm dead tired and I'm doing this shit with these MVGs. I'm going, what am I doing here? So we, so I I, I got the shoulder strap on, we blast off, we get to about a hundred feet canopy opens, holy shit.
And I go, you know, it's one of those things that add these things that add up. You go, I sh I probably should not be doing this. You know? And I came that close.
Speaker 2 (1h 6m 3s): Yeah, that's stuff two to get the three. We got a rule of it. If it's three, you gotta abort, didn go. Didn't. So
Speaker 3 (1h 6m 10s): I was, I was, I was able to grab the canopy and we got it shut. I'm like, man, man, this is just not, this is not going well. You know? And that had never happened to me, you know, ever. Yeah. And I'm going, Hmm, you know, maybe this is not just the right thing. So we just, we motored out and got in the wave and climbed up to 24,000 feet and then headed on south and then started our journey, you know, 17 hour and 40 minute journey. So,
Speaker 2 (1h 6m 34s): So I, I read your, I read your article. I would love, I, I know you've given other interviews about this, but it was beautiful that you, you talked about the beauty, even with the N VGs, this, oh, what does it look like? What, what do you
Speaker 3 (1h 6m 50s): Oh, it was wild mean.
Speaker 2 (1h 6m 52s): I've seen a bunch of your photos flying these FedEx jets, you know, around the world and they're amazing. And those of you listening, you gotta follow Gordon on Instagram. It's amazing. But I mean, what are you seeing that night? Because it just sounds like it, it would, I think it just would blow my mind if you see
Speaker 3 (1h 7m 9s): That. Yeah, it's, it's, you know, it, it, it's wild. 'cause you know, we headed, we headed south, which was right in the direction where, you know, you know, the Milky Way was just hanging over the entire canopy. And so you're sitting there with your dimlit instruments biggest
Speaker 2 (1h 7m 23s): Snow year and history. You know,
Speaker 3 (1h 7m 26s): You're sitting there with these, the dimm instruments, your various going, you know, and you're at 20,000 feet and it's pitch black outside and you know, you know, 'cause there's nothing between here and like bishop, right? And so it, it's just magical, you know? And it, it wasn't cold. And I remember telling Bruce, I said, this is just nuts. We're just looking at the milky ways and, and it's a shame that everyone doesn't have a chance to look through like legit night vision goggles. 'cause the amount of stars you see is unbelievable.
It's, I mean, you're, you, you're looking at satellites, you know, like left and right, shooting stars, you know, all, you know, and here you're with a, in a glider, 20 something thousand feet slipping along 150 knots over the ground, you know, just, it's like, wow. It was just magic, you know? And you, and you're the only gig in town because there's no one up there, you know? And so it was, yeah, It was, it was neat. We get down towards like Mammoth and everything's going well. And we had an issue getting into the Joshua complex 'cause they didn't open the airspace till five in the morning, which I didn't know about.
So Oakland Center's going, Hey, you need to get below 18,000 feet. I'm like, well don't you handle the airspace when Joshua's not working it down there in the Owens? And they said no. They said, it's, you gotta get below 18. I go, so what? No one's airliner aren't allowed above 18 in that Joshua complex? He goes, no, and something's, this is not right. And I go, can you just verify that? He goes, lemme check with my supervisor. So we're flipping along. I don't keep in mind, I don't wanna get below 18 because he started getting into that rotor zone and, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And you know, it's pitch black outside. So he goes, yep, sorry, supervisor says he got get below 18. So, you know, we're just kind of a bean mount. Tom and I started just shoving the nose over descending and flying outta the wave, well, flying into the Sierra out of the wave and then got in the airspace just below airspace just below 18. And was able to stay out of the, out of the bumps, you know, all the way down. And then, you know, made my first turn, turn point down near in current hooked back north.
And that was
Speaker 2 (1h 9m 30s): Like down, no wait, how far south did you get? Did you get just about, are you going off the Sierras?
Speaker 3 (1h 9m 35s): Yeah, we went down. You staying in about south? Just about south of, in just about a beam ocrn, so,
Speaker 2 (1h 9m 41s): Oh wow, okay. Whoa.
Speaker 3 (1h 9m 42s): So South Highway reservoir, you know, and, you know, so we turned there and that's kind where the wave kinda shuts down. 'cause the mountains change direction that, you know, down further south it takes more of a northwesterly flow. So the wave kind of shut down there. So I, I flew into a, a quite a big area of dead zone, like sink, sink, sink. And there's, there's a point where you cry open, you go, okay, we gotta turn back north, get back into the energy. 'cause if you, if you fly too much into that sink and then you turn northbound into the sink, now you're losing a lot of altitude and you know, next thing you know, you're down at 13,000 feet and just getting, getting the crap beat outta you.
So yeah, anyway, we turn back around and then about four 50, you know, Josh approach gets on the frequency, Hey, all aircraft Josh approaches up f you know, you know, up, up on frequency. So I call him, I said, Hey, looking for my Sage two clearance. He goes, you're cleared Sage twos, which gives me cl clearance up to 29,000 feet. So then I just climbed back up into, into the low twenties and then worked north and then right about of Beam Mount Whitney is where the MVGs came off. That's where I didn't need them anymore. And that was it.
That's
Speaker 2 (1h 10m 48s): The sun's coming up?
Speaker 3 (1h 10m 49s): Yeah, sun's
Speaker 2 (1h 10m 51s): Coming
Speaker 3 (1h 10m 51s): Just fall pink. And it was just, it was insane. You know? What,
Speaker 2 (1h 10m 55s): What was it, what was it, what were you get, what was it blowing on Whitney, you think
Speaker 3 (1h 11m 1s): That day The winds a off where it was probably Whitney was probably 40 knots, 50 knots on, okay. On, on the peak. 'cause we, we didn't see much up north, north arena. We saw about 70 knots, you know, know okay of wind up, up higher. But that day was fairly, fairly mild. Like I said earlier, if you get too much too strong a wind, it just, it, it just doesn't bo away, you know, people think, oh, the stronger the wind, the better wave's gonna be. Not necessarily, you know, it could be too, too strong enough. I've had that happen. And that really hampers your movement over the ground too.
You know, I've, I've been down your bishop where it's, it's literally a hundred. We had a hundred knots on the nose all the way to Menon, you know, and you're going, how am I gonna make ground speed? You know, you're doing 10 knots over the ground, you're watching semi-trucks fricking blown by you going up 3 95 pass. Ma'am, this is embarrassing. You know, so it wave just gets funky. You know
Speaker 2 (1h 11m 57s): What you, you said it was kind of a five out of a 10 day, but was this nice wave? I mean, was it nice wave flying? It just wasn't the, it
Speaker 3 (1h 12m 5s): Wasn't strong. It wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't the lighter your hair on fire type, you know, like the, the Owens Valley. And I told Bruce, I said, man, this is not, this is, we we're having to change gears here where you're like, okay, let's slow up a little bit. You know, you gotta slow up, you know, there are bigger dead zones and I, this is not, you can't just
Speaker 2 (1h 12m 22s): Rock it all day.
Speaker 3 (1h 12m 23s): I mean, there are days where you're, you're, I mean, like I said, you, I mean, I'll get Owens Valley at 18,000 feet and doing 140 knots indicated. And I get that loan pine, I'm at 26,000 feet still doing 140 knots indicated climbing, just like, holy shit. It's almost, it's almost eerily strong. You know, where you go. It's just, this is just scary, you know, like, this is gonna let me down, you know, so. Wow. And there's only so much, so fast you can fly before you start fluttering, you know, so you don't wanna, you don't wanna get fluttering.
Speaker 2 (1h 12m 53s): And I, I'm, I'm sorry for the, the ignorance here, but as, as I understand, you know, wave kind of stacks on that, what makes wave is it stacks on top of it itself, correct? You, those of you listening can't see my hands, but it's kind of, you know, it's, it's kind of in a sense folding on top of, you know, that's how you can kind of keep benching up, correct? Is that, do I understand that right
Speaker 3 (1h 13m 15s): Now, if you, if you picture like a, like a, a, a big rock in a stream, you'll see that, that water, because water where's just like here, right? So it's, you'll see that water flow over that rock and then downstream, if there's no other rock, it's just flat gravel bottom, you'll see those, those harmonics of, of wave. And that's exactly how mountain wave sets up. So, so there will be a line which is typically maybe half mile in width that you can work the leading edge of that.
Like let's say there's lenticular, that wave will be, that lift will be on the leading edge on the windward side of that lenticular cloud, downwind of the mountain range. And that's typically, let's just say over the 3 95, you know, maybe five miles east of the spine of the, of the range for the most part. If you know where that wave is, you can really use that to an advantage, whether you're in a power plant or a glider. You know, I may hear guys, they're, they're down. You can hear 'em just getting the shit knocked at 'em, you know, they're talking to Joshua, they're in assassin or something going, man, I'm reporting severe turbulence.
And, and I'm going, man, this guy just moves up wind, you know, two or three miles. He can shut his motor down if he wants and fly the whole way, you know, all the way up in glass through there. Wow. So, so on the backside of that, on the downwind side of that, you know that that air mass goes up, it's coming down equally as strong. So that's what, that's what's killed a lot of people, you know, or you know, first of all, you get to down, wash off the Sierra. If you're too close to the range, you'll just get that downlow wind that just sometimes too strong for a, an average airplane even out, out climb, you know, and then you'll downwind of that.
You'll have the, the, the propagation of air mass going up in the, in the primary wave. And then in between the up and the down part of the wave, you'll have the rotor up at kind of the ridge top level. That is very, very violent.
Speaker 2 (1h 15m 9s): But it won't, it won't, I, I guess maybe I wasn't describing it right or maybe probably just lack of understanding. But it won't keep, so if you're looking at my hands here that, you know, you get the wave coming off Lee side of the, of the Sierras. Yeah. That's what you're searching for. Couldn't you just, you're flying north, couldn't you just hang a 90 degree right. And keep flying that wave into Nevada or I mean just keep going east and keep, keep going with that wave. Well keep going with the harmonics.
Speaker 3 (1h 15m 39s): Well, yeah, if you, yeah, if you commit to like a downwind flight, right, which I, which I've done. Yeah. You know, I, I, I'll climb up in the primary wave here and get up to 28,000 feet and then go east. The typical, typically those harmonics, they'll start getting lower, like the secondary wave east of the primary wave will be set up lower and then they'll progressively get lower until it eventually dampens out. So, but yeah, I mean like going eastbound, what you'll try to do is, or pick up different wave systems off of different mountain ranges like the Tobis or the rubies or you know, these big pilot peaks, you know, north of Lovelock, you know, these ranges.
Sometimes you'll get, you'll get good wave off of those too,
Speaker 2 (1h 16m 24s): So you can get new primary wave. Exactly.
Speaker 3 (1h 16m 26s): So what
Speaker 2 (1h 16m 27s): Do, and
Speaker 3 (1h 16m 28s): So if you go down wind, you, you basically go downwind the keys that go just to sit as slow as you can, like at minimum sink speed. So you're like a 50 knots, it's very comfortable. So you're not flying, you're not hauling ass, but your ground speed is 'cause you got an 80 knot tailwind, so you're just clipping over the ground and you're letting the wind kind of do the work. So you just kind of float down wind and then maybe try to fly a hundred, 150 miles down wind till you get to another big range. Then once you get downwind to that, you kind of feel it. And as you're going downwind that variable can start going do, do, do, you know, and like, oh shit, then you gotta turn into the wind like really quickly.
'cause your ground speed's so flat fast, you'll flat out the wave really quickly. So once you turn into the wind, now you're zero ground speed again, kind of nibbling around, searching for the big stuff. And then once you find it, you stop, you just point into the wind and you got hopefully a zero ground speed and you go up like an elevator back up to 28,000 feet and then turn down wind again for another hundred. Keep doing it. Yeah, exactly. So,
Speaker 2 (1h 17m 23s): Okay, so you're, the sun's coming up, you're over Whitney, that's beautiful. You've got, you've, you've been in the air, what, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6? It gets pretty, pretty light. It gets light at five, I guess in June. Yeah, been probably five 30
Speaker 3 (1h 17m 39s): Probably three, three hours. Yeah. Okay. Three, four hours probably. Four hours, yeah. Okay.
Speaker 2 (1h 17m 44s): Okay. So you're almost halfway through, right? Just
Speaker 3 (1h 17m 47s): Getting,
Speaker 2 (1h 17m 47s): What, what time did you land? You just getting going?
Speaker 3 (1h 17m 50s): Yeah, we landed I think after Sunset. Yeah, it was, so it was, yeah, it was four hours in a, in a 17 hour. So we, we still had 13 hours. 13 hours ago.
Speaker 2 (1h 18m 0s): Geez. Yeah. It,
Speaker 3 (1h 18m 2s): Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1h 18m 3s): What do you guys do? Are you taking shifts? Are you taking naps or what? How does this work?
Speaker 3 (1h 18m 8s): No, I stayed awake the whole time. What I try to do is I tried to just kind of close my eyes, you know, in the airline world you kind of learn to kind of take cat naps and, you know, these little cat naps seemed to to work pretty well, but I turned the, the volume on the verio up so I could kind of hear what's going because Bruce wasn't really aware of where to fly, you know? Yeah. I'm like, and you can get yourself in a world of hurt like so quick. You know, if you, if you take your crab angle out, you know, on a south and northbound track, and now, now you're, next thing you know, you're going down 2000 feet, a minute going, dude, what happened?
You know? So I I I, I just, I stayed awake the whole time, but I, I tried to practice, I closed my eyes and, and you know, I was just listening to the veryo and as soon as I would hear something, you know, like, oh, where's where, what happened to the left? You know, I, you know, wake up and I never, never slept. I never got in there and ram anything like that, you know, but yeah, yeah, you just drive, you just run non adrenaline, you know how that goes. So that's pretty much how it went. But it's funny, the mindset went from, okay, well, we'll, you know, we can, I think we get a thousand kilometers no problem.
You know, so we're coming back like, yeah, that, that's cool, you know, we'll get, we got a thousand kilometers done and then we got north of Reno and too much moisture north of Reno and the wave got really soft. I'm like, okay, here we go south again. And so we ran back south and went pretty much ran back down Anoc current and, and you know, nothing really, it was nothing really hard, you know, other than the fatigue on the most of these legs. And so we ran south again, and yeah, there was, there was points where you're going, man, I'm dragging, you know, this is, I'm hurting here.
I'm tired. So we went back pretty much down in your current, came back north back up to Reno and like, okay, shit, if we can get 1500 kilometers and that'd be cool, you know, so we, we tagged that, you know, we got that notch and so we went south again and, and now it's like, oh shit, we, we get 2000 kilometers. That's, that's pretty cool. You know? And that finally became real reality.
Speaker 2 (1h 20m 13s): What's your, what's your average? What do you, what, what what's your average speed
Speaker 3 (1h 20m 18s): For this? For the, for the entire flight we average 110 miles an hour. So, so, and you know, on, on a less than stellar day, you know, it was, it was, it was really, really kinda weird. But, so that was a five, that was a five turn point flight. And that's why it's not recognized by the I G C for like a world record. 'cause it was, you know, we used more than three turn points, but it's recognized by O L C and then we glide. So what
Speaker 2 (1h 20m 48s): Was the total distance?
Speaker 3 (1h 20m 50s): 3058 kilometers. So Klaus had done at 3008 kilometers. It was, was that 1900? That was 1900 statute. I think that's what it comes out to. So yeah, so the, the, I mean, fast forward everything to the very last leg. It was like, oh shit, I think we can get maybe 3000 k outta the, so I'm like, Bruce, I said, here's the thing. I said, the wave's supposed to shut down. There's, we saw all day that north of Reno up, like near Susanville and that whole area there was just a, a shit ton of moisture.
And you go there, there's just no wave up there. And so I I, I figured we would have to stretch our flight. A final leg would have to, we would have to get to like Urus or Cedarville or somewhere up in that area. And I thought the likelihood of that was gonna be so slim because first of all, there, there wasn't any wave forecast. And then secondly, there was so much moisture up there. So I, I told Bruce on our fine leg up the Owens Valley, I said, let's just, let's just get up. If we can get up to Reno, we'll just, we'll just kind of feel it out.
And if it's, if it's shitty, we'll just come back and land and you know, we, we will have gotten over 2,500 kilometers, which is still pretty, pretty freaking good. So, so we get up the last leg, we get up. So now I'm start, I'm not tired anymore. 'cause I'm like, you know, I'm just, I'm like, did this whole thing could become a reality now
Speaker 2 (1h 22m 9s): You got a soul. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (1h 22m 10s): Oh, like, like now you're starting to wake up again, like you're on ambition now. So we get up to Reno and it's, it's very, very weak wave, you know, just so spotty. And Sky Site, once again was just working really well. There was, there were some markers. So I get just west of the Reno airport and I, I park and wave and I've got zero ground speed and, and I like Bruce start, start working the numbers. We need to figure out where we can go. And, and he goes, okay.
I said, I think Al Alteris or Cedarville will get us over the 3000 kilometer market. He goes, yeah, I agree. I said, all right, start getting, finding the weather. So we had a stratus, a D S B antenna and, and four flight on the iPhone. And so he starts getting, getting all the weather from this place. He goes, well it's Alturas is calling, you know, 1500 scattered eight, you know, 2 20, 200 scattered, 3000 overcast. And it's like, holy shit man, there's a lot of weather up there. So like, what about Cedarville? He goes, no, there's no, there's no awas for Cedarville. So there's no weather reporting there.
So I figured, I told, and I, I remember telling him, I said, Bruce, I said, typically east of that range of Cedarville, it's, you're out in the desert. So it's kind like all those mountains are holding the weather back. So it will probably be clear in the Cedarville area. So my flight computer was saying, you know, for our alt two, there's no way we had it made. You know, we were gonna, we, we were way below glide. So I'm like, oh shit, you know, if we can, if we can at least manage a lower sync rate, you know, maybe zero sync for a while, then we could maybe kind of get up to glide.
So I called, I called Oakland Center, I said, Hey, is there any chance I can get higher? He goes, no unable, you know, traffic or something. I said, Hey this. And I actually told him, I said this, this could potentially be the longest der flight in history. Is there any, anything we can work at? You know? And he goes, standby, you know, he goes, alright, you cleared up to forgot what it was, two five oh or something. So I just sat like one or two knots of lift, just going shit, just climbing so slowly, just milking everything I could. And I got, I was like, as high as I can, I said, all right, we're outta here, you know.
So we started What time of day is it now? Is it was like four or five, probably six o'clock or six. Six o'clock. Okay. Yeah. It's getting, yeah, the sun angle's starting to get low, but I'm going, got NDGs right Start round two on the NDGs, so like whatever. And so we started making a run out to the northeast and, and I saw a huge layer of under cast and I went, so we were headed out towards in the direction Altus from Reno.
So we kind of had a, not, we had, i, I don't wanna say quartering head. When we, we were tracking about, our heading was about 3, 4 0. We're tracking about 0 3 0, you know, because we've got about 80 knots of wind. So, so the winds weren't really hurting us too much, but I started kind of heading for this big under cast, which is, I couldn't tell how far out from the distance it was and where we would be in relation to that under cast once we got there. But I go, Bruce, we can't fly, we're not flying through that.
We're gonna have to duck underneath that or, or pull the spoilers out. And, and I hope, I was hoping we didn't have to do that. So I sat on this long kind of efficient glide out towards this under cast in the direction of Alur and we finally gotta the under cast and we are maybe five miles from it. And I go, fuck, this is gonna work out perfectly. You know, I can just shove the nose over and we'll slide underneath it. I don't have to pull spoilers out and you know, kill my glide to Urus. So I shove the nose over and I slid underneath this thing and then, and it got pretty dark and now there's this fricking snow showers left and right and I'm just flying in between this stuff, trying not to get ice on the winds, you know?
So I'm just kind, we my waist, you get to do that, God, that is awesome. Some we through this shit, I'm weaving through this stuff and I'm going, shit. I said, you know, the fact that we're not doing a straight line. I said, this is, this is hurting us, you know? And so finally, you know, we get to, we get to maybe 50 miles south of Uras and I, I can look off in the distance 'cause it was hard to see 'cause of all these snow showers. But I look off in the distance and I see this, the sun hitting this big patch of ground.
I'm going, oh shit, that's nice. A big blue hole, you know. So I kind of headed for it and I got in this big blue hole, this valley. And then I made a left turn towards, directly towards Alura and we now we're probably maybe 40 miles from Elura. And I just hit a, I just, I came up to a wall of moisture all the way to the ground. I mean I felt like I was flying on the east coast or something 'cause of all these different layers of clouds. And I went, oh no. And the computer said, I'll never forget it said 2,988 kilometers.
I was 12 kilometers short of 3000 k. And you're looking at this wall of moisture going, do you know, you're kind of going, do I do it? Do I do it? I go, I, I go, Bruce, we can't do it. We're, we're, we're, we'll we'll kill ourselves if we do this, this stuff's going to the ground, you know? And I go, 'cause I don't have PTO heat or anything, you know, so I'm gonna lose all my instruments with the icing if I fly into this stuff and Bruce goes, well it's only 30 mile I go, we're done. We're we, we can't do it. So I flipped a u-turn, you can see it on the trace. I sent you the glide link, but I yeah, did a complete U-turn.
I said put Cedarville in the computer, you know, in the computer. So we got that in the computer and said, we're like 4,000 feet low plus our direct line. From our point there to Cedarville, we would've had across the entire range mountain range, which you know, was, it was co out, there's no way you could do that. And plus it was so much cloud cover. So I had to go south first and then go to the south end of that range over this big high plateau. So before I could start going east out towards the desert and to where the Cedarville Valley is.
So now my computer's giving me my straight line computation, but I'm having to go make this big shuck and jive around the south end of this range. So all my numbers are out to lunch, so I'm going, so I, I end up over this big plateau and I'm just kind of milking it going, holy shit, I dunno if I'm gonna get over the ridge here. You know, because we had like 15 miles to go and I'm just a couple thousand feet over the, over this plateau and I'm just, just kind of milking it eastbound. And, and I went, oh shit. And there was a field down there like a farmer field.
And I keep in mind I I, I've got the, I've got the engine, but will it, you know, is it gonna start? I don't know. You can't rely on it. 'cause you have to, first of all, you have to extend it, then you have to start it, you know, is it even gonna start? So you can't really rely on that. Let's see how farm field out there. And I, once we got a beam, I go, there's no way we could've landed there, there was, there was a pipe dream, but I ended up seeing the, when I saw the edge of the ridge and I, I kind kind of just eyeball. I said, oh, I think we're gonna make it. So we were able to cross over that ridge.
And then once I got the sky started opening up a little bit more. And then I saw like a cumulus cloud over the valley about 30 miles south of 20 miles south of Cedarville. My computer still said 2,988 kilometers. So I hadn't, and I was pissed. I go here, I'm going all this way east, but I'm not adding miles, right? I can't I to go north. I, no. So I'm going, shit. So I, I go Bruce, I'm ahead for that, that cloud. And, and once I was able to see it, I go, shit, that's a rotor cumul, that's like a rotor cue cloud that was associated with wave.
And I could see some ragged like wave that was setting up in the valley there. I went, shit, I think I can, if I get underneath this cloud, I can work. So I get underneath this cloud and I'm maybe 2,500 A G l and I'm, I still can't make Cedarville, right? But there now there's a dry lake I can land on, which was wet, you know, the glad we've been there for days. But I end up circling underneath this thing and there's one knot, two knot, three knots left also. And I get up and then I push west of it into wave and it goes la and all of a sudden it very just goes and I sort press north and the computer freaking finally numbers matched up for, for Cedarville and said, you got it made.
And I'm like, holy shit. So I, I ran north in that wave on the east side of that Cedarville range. Yeah, I remember the name of the range. And I, I shot right over Cedarville. I go, that's, you know, by then it was already 3030 kilometer whatever, and went all the way north until I ran into fricking snow showers again. And then just, that was the, that's where the distance was calculated all the way to that northern point. And then I turned south and came to Cedarville and, and and landed and we had, you know, 3058 kilometers in bags.
So we landed and cops show up and yeah, like what hell these guys doing here? The guy's on the phone going, yeah, that's one eight nine Delta 10 confirm. He's landed at Cedarville. And I go, was he goes, that was the fa call because they're wondering what they, they thought you were landing at Altura because that was the last thing I told 'em. I was landing at Alur and you didn't. So the cops went to, first they didn't see an airplane, had this guy planted in the mountain somewhere. So they go, shit, let's try Cedarville. Like, dude, can you help us push a glider outta the way? So we get out of this glider, we tie it down some, some tie down rope and tied it down on the line and you know, now it starts kind raining and drizzling.
And, and the guys tried to hook us up with a motel and there was nothing around. Everything was, you know, when now it's dark. And so we showed up in these big goofy suits on these expedition suits. Finally we, we got some lady at the hotel to or motel to open the, open the door. She goes, yeah, I got one room left. And so we, we got a room and then Bruce found some people, you know, a few doors down, they had a bottle of scotch and he bought a bottle of scotch from him. He just got hammered that good time.
He didn't sleep obviously, because you just fired up.
Speaker 2 (1h 32m 1s): I was gonna say, there's no way you slept even as, even as exhausted as you were, you must've been fired up. That was wild. That's amazing. So yeah, I don't understand the, the, the record thing. So it was the longest flight that's ever happened in the Sailplane, but it's not a record 'cause it can only be three points. Is that right?
Speaker 3 (1h 32m 18s): Yeah, that's the max That, that's a max that the I G C. Well, so that's the maximum number of turn points that the I G C recognizes three. So it's like, it's unofficially the longest, you know, class almond still has the world record for a three turn point, which is 3008 kilometers, you know? Okay. So. Gotcha. So I've got, I I think that's very doable outta here, you know? So I've got,
Speaker 2 (1h 32m 40s): I was gonna say, if you had a five out of a 10 day Yeah, that's insane. Yeah. You're in the air for how long? 17. How much?
Speaker 3 (1h 32m 49s): 40 minutes? Yeah,
Speaker 2 (1h 32m 51s): 17, almost 10 hours.
Speaker 3 (1h 32m 54s): So all night.
Speaker 2 (1h 32m 55s): Yeah, you know, all day.
Speaker 3 (1h 32m 57s): So yeah, it's just, it kinda gets you fired up and do more of this. And then I think we can do some big massive triangles in the wave. You, you know, like 1500 kilometer, almost 2000 kilometer triangle flight, you know, run from maybe here down to in current and out towards Ely and then back up towards Minden, up to Susanville and then, you know, so in your current, your first turn point, E Lee's your second, and then Susanville would be there, like your third turn point and,
Speaker 2 (1h 33m 22s): And are you working, you know, are you working with Rammy? Are you working with a whole bunch of other Gary down in Albuquerque? No. Are you guys all kinda all working together or this is just your, your gig?
Speaker 3 (1h 33m 32s): No, it's just my gig, you know, 'cause not, not, like I said, not too many people are, are into this. I mean, some, some people are still, some people are starting to get a little more interested in it, you know, intrigued with it, with the wave stuff, but not to the extent that, you know, they, they just, most guys just aren't into that, you know? I mean, most guys go, well, there's no way I could sit in a, in, in a freaking cockpit that long, you know? Right. And they're just not, they just don't want to, I'm not saying they couldn't, you know, it's just they don't have the desire or will to Right.
You. I get it. That's that's fine. You know, and it's nothing, yeah. Nothing wrong with that. Just like, they wanna go, go to bed and sleep at night, I get it.
Speaker 2 (1h 34m 12s): But
Speaker 3 (1h 34m 13s): There's stuff that can be done, you know, tried, you know, and we got the weather here to do it, take advantage of it. So.
Speaker 2 (1h 34m 20s): Right. How would you, how would you do it with the three turn point thing? I mean, if you really, if you, so what, what, what's your vision now? What, what do you, what do you do with this Now,
Speaker 3 (1h 34m 32s): What's very doable is, so the, the problem we have here in the Sierra with, with waver kind of in this area is that we're, we're, we're limited with North and south wise with Wave, because you get on the southern end of this wave area, it starts to get too soft and the wave shuts down. If you get too far north, you typically will run into moisture. You know, you start getting to that jet jet axis. So whereas like Argentina, they, they have a much longer area of mountains, you know, where they can run further north and south and, and that kind of thing.
But I think like with the turn three turn point, like Klaus Oman's thing would be take off here, go down to Ino, Kern, up to Susanville, back down to in your Kern. And then you'd land up in, you know, north of Casper, Wyoming. Which is, which is very, very, very doable. So if you take off here like, like at 10 o'clock at night, and you get these, these legs done in at night, in, in, in a comfortable area, geographic. 'cause we're used to this area and we're used to the wave working in this area and do all that stuff during the night hours.
And as the sun comes up, you, you fly and come up to Minden and, and then you start hitting off, heading off to the northeast, like what I do, going down wind, you know, and then, you know, then you end up, then you end up on a downwind flight, you know, where you, you got that massive tailwind and you just, if you end up in your, like the Casper area, that would put you over the 3000 kilometer mark. So,
Speaker 2 (1h 36m 5s): And in the, in the Sailplane community, is there any poo-pooing on, oh, that's, but these guys are doing it at night or is there any, is there any friction there? Or is this just the whole That's a good question. Going, this is badass, this is really cool
Speaker 3 (1h 36m 20s): Right now. I, I think it's in the badass or, you know, category. Yeah. I don't know where it's gonna go in the future. I, I, you know, and, and what I tell everyone, it's like, you know, I, whether this is a record, I don't, I don't, I can give a rat's ass, you know, it's more of, you know, you're, you're opening up some boundaries. You're ex exploring new areas and, and you're utilizing technology and, and utilizing an air mass, whether it's working day and night, you know, it doesn't matter, you know, for gotta go, well, let's, he's doing it at nighttime. Well, sure.
I'm, I'm not doing anything illegal. And if they say, well, you can't see a lot of the Europeans, they, the, the Germans, they cannot, even if they have a glider that's equipped, that's equipped for night flight, they cannot fly glider there at night. So all the Europeans think that my flight was not a record because I didn't, you know, a certain number of hours at night. And they, they don't have that luxury that we have. And I even emailed I G c the, the, the I G C folks about it. And the guy goes, oh no.
He goes, you're, as long as you comply with the rules of your country, you're legal to do whatever because you're, you're thing at night that that wouldn't invalidate your flight. He goes, the fact that you'd use more turn three turn points does, you know, so I mean, I could've used three, you know, so anyway, that, that's, that's where we are with that whole thing. But people are very fascinated. I think the Germans, you know, the, I did a few test flights at night and I just posted it and just, people went nuts. Like, what the hell? This guy's flying a gliders before this 3000 kilometer flight even came about, the Germans were calling me asking for, you know, interviews to, to write articles just about night flight, you know, in a glider with night vision articles because they were so intrigued by that.
I like go, holy shit, this is pretty wild. This is like James Bond stuff. And so
Speaker 2 (1h 38m 8s): It is James Bond stuff. And again, since I've been following you and watching your pictures and videos, it's just fully James Bond, man, you're oh oh seven out there. It's awesome.
Speaker 3 (1h 38m 18s): It's, it's pretty cool. So it's neat that, you know, I haven't gotten much, I haven't gotten any friction at all. You know, I haven't heard anything good, anything negative, you know, whether social media or his word of mouth, I haven't heard anything like, oh, this guy's cheating, or, I mean, there's, listen, I'm not cool. I don't break any rules. You, I'm just, I'm doing everything in, in whether people like it or not. I'm just gonna keep doing, I think it's cool. And I think, yeah, air mass is going up at night using it, you know, and that's what I'm doing. Yeah. And I've got, luckily have the capability to do that.
So, but you know, when it, you know, with the, with the record thing, I don't know if there's nothing, I mean, if there's a record done, I, I know people are gonna start looking into it. 'cause Claus, Oman, I think he was, he, he saw this nighttime stuff and I think he starting to, you know, sniffing out there. There's probably some, some stuff that he's probably trying to work on. 'cause there was a, I sold Dennis Tito's other acus, and I got a call from a guy down in Argentina.
The guy was, you know, like I said, what do you, what do you wanna do with the Glader? He goes, well, close home. He wants me to buy it. So it's like, you know, so
Speaker 2 (1h 39m 30s): It's, so, I mean, you know what, what he, what he's doing over there, over the med and stuff is just so cool, you know?
Speaker 3 (1h 39m 38s): Yeah. Have you heard, have you heard of Baptist in song? The French guy he's doing? No, he's, he was doing that stuff over the med. He did some big, big flights, big triangle flights where he, he launched from the Alps and then crossed over to what was the island down there in the med, and then jumped off Coral. Yeah. Then jumped off downwind into Croatia, then Flew Ridge and Thermal left back. I
Speaker 2 (1h 40m 3s): Complete, I did, I did hear about that. Sorry. I was, I was confusing him with Klaus. But yeah, I mean, it's just, it's, it's remarkable. You know, it is just so cool that, you know, the Red Bull xop, it takes us 12 days to do that whole range, and you guys do it in a day. You know, it's really awesome.
Speaker 3 (1h 40m 19s): No, I think I, I think what you guys, that's pretty cool. I'm just sitting on putting my ass in the seat, pre emptying hours. You guys are walking, doing all this crap, you know?
Speaker 2 (1h 40m 27s): Oh yeah. It's vicious. It's vicious. But it's, it, it, it super inspiring. I I really appreciate what you're, you know, you're pressing into because it's, yeah, it's
Speaker 3 (1h 40m 37s): New boundaries. It
Speaker 2 (1h 40m 38s): Feels kind of apol man. Yeah. I mean, it feels, it feels, yeah. Yeah. It feels that, that you're, you're opening new lines, right? Which is kind of what this thing's been about for a long time. You know, we're trying to find lines that are cool, that are aesthetic, and that are Yeah, yeah. That are pushing the boundaries. 1, 1, 1 final question here. I just, because you know, we don't think like you do as pilots when it comes to landing. 'cause we can land anywhere. I know that's not the case with sail planes, but it's, do you, do you get, when you've flown as long as you have and you have the experience that you have, does your threshold for safety keep dropping?
Because, you know, you, you're, I've got the experience, I could figure this out, you know, I'm, I'm going for this big distance. Or do you really just have to keep a really, I mean, it sounds like you kind of, the margin got a little soft there. The, at the end of that la you know, the, your big one, but you
Speaker 3 (1h 41m 36s): Know, yeah, it, it, it, it does. I think you, you have to know your own limits. You know, now on that, on that big flight, could, you know, I could've just said, well, I, I wanna get my 3000 kilometers pushed right into the moisture gone for Altura and probably probably not been talking to you right now, you know? But I think there's, there's a point where you do get to that limit. And it's funny 'cause that, that that flight I ta you, you, you get to that point, you know, and, and everyone that's done these, you know, these big things, sometimes you get to that point.
You go, do I cross that line? You know, if I cross it, I might be paying dearly for this. You know, is this worth it? You know? And you know, and I think my experience in the military and, and the airlines there, there's a, a safety aspect that you, you, you put in there, you go, this nothing's worth this. You know? It's just, it's ridiculous. Not going, I don't wanna be the guy that go, what was the guy? That guy was idiot. What was he thinking? You know? Yeah. So I, I mean there's, there's a certain, you know, I don't wanna say I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm not reckless by any means, but I always, I always have an an out.
If as long as you have an out, you know, like, okay, well I can land at that field 'cause men's got too big of a crosswind. I'll go downwind, I'll land in Hawthorne into the wind on the runway, you know, then, then, then that's a good, you, you have to have those options. You know, you have to have those, those alternatives. And if, if you don't, if you don't have enough, then it's kind of foolish flying. It's just, it's just like flying a, flying a glider and just leaving an area of lift and going, okay, I'm gonna go for that cloud and if I, if there's no lift there, there's no place to land, I'm breaking the glider.
That to me, that's foolish. I just, I never fly that way, you know? Yeah. Even if I have an engine, 'cause I don't rely on that engine to start, it might not start. So, gotcha. I, I, I think I'm fairly safe in my think, you know, are you are, you're definitely taking more risk, you know, doing that type of flying than I'm, than thermal flying 'cause of the elements you're dealing with. It's just, that's just the nature of the beast. You know, it's just like climbing K two versus, you know, some other, some smaller peak. There's just certain, certain amounts of elements of risk you have to put up with, you know, but
Speaker 2 (1h 43m 45s): Sure.
Speaker 3 (1h 43m 45s): You know, the safest possible way you can do, it's, that's the way to do it. So yeah, we gotta get you down here. Y I think it'll,
Speaker 2 (1h 43m 54s): I Gordon, I'm, I'm coming man. I, I, if, if, if, if you're, if you're, if you're sincere about the offer, you just gimme a shout. I will, I will come. This has been amazing. Thank you for your time. I, I told you in the beginning we were gonna go for about an hour. We're getting close to two, so Excellent. The whiskey's been delicious. You've been incredibly entertaining and thank you, sir. And I'll be, I'll be watching you and I can't wait to see what you do next. Thank
Speaker 3 (1h 44m 22s): You Gavin, thanks for your time. Appreciate it. Appreciate
Speaker 2 (1h 44m 24s): It bud. Nice
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