June 13, 2015 - Quite a Day

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May and June show typically the best thermal conditions in Washington and together with some of the longest daylight hours present the best potential for extended soaring flights. Saturday June 13 of this year saw a number of ambitious XC pilots attempting some really long distance flights. The OLC provides a good look at what happened and allows some useful statistical comparisons. So here are the best flights from our different airports in the state:

Kelvyn took advantage of the self-launch capability of his ASH-31Mi to launch from Davenport so that he could take advantage of the usually earlier thermal development east of Ephrata (which did not quite work out). After some waiting he took off at 11:26 am.and successfully made his declared flight in 6.6 hours, good for his diamond distance as well as for Washington State motor glider records for declared distance around three turn points (340.2 miles) and distance around a free triangle (298.9 miles).

Just 6 minutes after Kelvyn Ken Merrill took off from Deer Park, even further east. His flight turned out to be the longest in Washington for the year both in distance (428 miles) and duration (7.9 hours).

At 11:50 - 24 minutes after Kelvyn - Movses took off from Ephrata in the venerable G102 X3, returning in 6.4 hours for 661. 4 OLC points, his personal best (and probably for X3 too).

Another 3 minutes later Ron Clark launched from Twisp on a 7.2 hour flight in his LS-3 for his personal best of 769.4 OLC points, which so far is also the high score for Region 8 this year.

These four remarkable flights were made mostly or totally over the Columbia basin. The average realized climb rates ranged from 356 fpm to 432 fpm, representing good but not outstanding lift conditions for eastern Washington.

So how did this compare to the west side? There were not too many flights on that day on the west side but Dan Housler (taking off at 11:43 am) had a nice 6.1 hour flight from Arlington for 489.2 OLC points (second place in the WBC 2015 so far). This flight took place mostly in the mountains with a slow initial step climb to a working altitude band and the realized average climb rate of 257 fpm reflects the more challenging conditions.

These results provide a pretty good indication of the XC potential of our various Washington soaring sites. All of them have their unique characteristics, attractions and challenges, and offer a diversity of conditions available to XC soaring pilots.