Zapata, TX (near Laredo)
Flytec World Record Encampment:
I'd like to dedicate this flight and the resulting FAI record to Vincene Muller of Muller Windsports; without her energetic assistance and positive attitude I would certainly have failed to deal with the FAI paperwork. From my early flights ten years ago off Mt. Seven to many dark retrieves to a welcoming smile in Cochrane, Vincene has been and remains a very positive force in the flying world.
Note:
This is a very rough draft of the story, but I wanted to put something on paper
while the memories are fresh—I wrote this in four hours this afternoon and am
posting it now, so it’s a bit rough. I hope you enjoy it, but it’s
definitely field writing and certainly contains errors I’ll correct in the
finished version.
Actually, I'm going to leave this as is. It's straight out of the field, I like the rough tone of it more, there are polished versions of it out there in mags...
A few years ago Gary Osoba looked all over the United States for a flying site with strong, consistent winds, good thermal potential and a host of other variables that could add up to world record flights. He choose Zapata, TX, and last year the world hang gliding record was broken several times concluding in Manfred Ruhmer’s 430+ mile flight. Josh Cohn set a new distance to goal record of 200 miles on a paraglider, and Davis Straub set a new world record for rigid wings of about 400 miles. It was clear that Zapata is an amazing place for distance flying. I’ve spent every spring for the last five years chasing world records; in 1998 I flew 180 miles from Hobbs, NM, to near Bryce TX, and then had my record beaten by Godfrey Wennes flying in Australia. I’ve wanted it back ever since then, so this spring I joined up with the Flytec World Record Encampment in Zapata to chase records and film a TV documentary on the whole process with Darryl Czuchra.
We arrived on the 14th of June, and the
next day David Prentice and I flew over 150 miles in seven hours. On the 19th
of June Louise Crandall and I flew 130 miles in six hours. On the 20th
of June David flew his Ozone Proton GT 240 miles for a new world record. He
launched at 11:00 in the morning and landed at 8:00. The same day Mike Barber
and Pete Lehmann set a new hang gliding distance to goal world record of 321
miles and Mike Barber then continued 100+ miles to go farther than anybody ever
had, just missing an official world record by less than a mile (you have to
exceed the old record by one percent). That day was epic; the clouds formed
early, the wind blew hard out of the south and many people had epic flights.
Unfortunately, I had some problems mainly due to my own lack of organization and
never left the tow field. I was frustrated with myself but also excited to be
here and part of such energy. On June 21st Gary called for light east
south-east winds, but I was determined to make the most of the day regardless.
Here’s what happened.
June 21
After yesterday’s debacle I was extremely motivated. Nothing purifies desire like a good dose of resistance. By 9:30 I was in the tow field, where the sky was absolutely full of moist clouds. Gary’s morning forecast had predicted relatively light southeast winds aloft but good cloud development early, and sure enough there were good clouds but they were moving slower than the day before; many people elected not to fly due to the low wind, but at 9:50 I was clipped into the tow line. Russ and Bo had come out to help David Prentice with the towing (he made it back from his flight at 4:30 in the morning, it really shows his level of commitment to the common cause that he was out there at 9:00 in the morning), and I heeded their advice to wait a minute for a good cloud to set up overhead before towing. The tow went very well; Dave got me to 1,000 feet over the ground, by far the highest tow I’d had. Immediately I hooked a light but solid 100 up and started the game. The time was 10:00 a.m. I had never been able to stay in the air towing before about 11:00, but this day seemed more promising.
I was very careful with the climb off tow; often in the morning you only
get one chance. The wind here blows hard enough that it only takes a few circles
and you’re out over a seemingly endless mesquite mess with very limited
access. Three days ago I landed about eight miles from the tow paddock and it
took four hours for a retrieve vehicle to get within walking distance of me.
That day I walked about a mile and used 1.5 liters of water before crawling into
some half-shade under a bush to wait out the afternoon and the retrieve. Most of
the other areas I’ve flown in have good access roads or reasonable
temperatures; there are lots of roads here, but they are almost all behind
locked gates, and the heat is really unlike anything else I’ve ever
experienced. It’s quite serious landing out here; a border patrol officer told
me they find bodies in the brush regularly. Although my climb was slow, I was
absolutely determined to stay cool at base rather than suffer on the ground
again.
On the radio I could hear that my friend Felipe Haram from Mexico was in
the air which was good, it’s always nice to have someone else in the air with
you even if they are a ways off. At least then you have someone to relay
coordinates to the chase car if you do land out. My drift was light, and after
an hour I had only gone about 20 miles, but I was still in the air. Let’s see,
on my two other long flights here I had landed at about 7:00, unable to find
more lift. That gave me nine hours or 180 miles, a far cry from the 242 I
needed. However, you can usually fly faster in the middle of the day, so figure
30 miles an hour for four hours and then a bit slower in the evening, that works
out to maybe 230 and my glider is surging all over the place, better focus on
flying. No matter how I calculated it a world record didn’t seem likely, but I
figured the experience of flying the morning would be good so I decided to stay
in the air and just see where I was at 1:00. It’s also common to land between
about 12:00 and 1:00; a time I call the “witching hour;” it’s like the
morning lift stops and the afternoon lift isn’t working yet, and I wanted more
experience surviving that.
From ten to 11:30 I flew very conservatively, circling in any scrap of
lift and staying as high as possible to make sure I stayed in the game and out
of the mesquite hell. At 11:30 the sky started to dry up noticeably, a sure sign
that the thermals were spacing out as the day’s heating took cloud base
higher. I hooked a solid 700 fpm climb that took me up in the blue to 6500 feet,
well above the “old” base at 3500 feet. I did my first long glide to the
east in order to avoid controlled airspace around the Laredo airport. As Gary
had predicted the wind was blowing more from the east than the south, which made
it harder to stay out of Mexico, the Laredo airport and possibly the Del Rio
military base at 200 miles from take off. Whenever I had a choice I took a
slightly easterly glide so that I wouldn’t get blown into Mexico or controlled
airspace.
At 12:00 I broke out my lunch of two Pop Tarts and enjoyed the first one
immensely. Eating and drinking in flight are essential to stay motivated;
unfortunately I dropped the second Pop Tart, which got me a little aggravated as
all I had left in the food bucket were two Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream cookies
and it could be a long day. I briefly considered spiral diving after my Pop Tart
but it actually got a good glide going and zipped off into the distance proving
that about anything will go faster than a paraglider. I had done about 45 miles
in the first two hours, definitely NOT a record pace. I thought again about
landing but every time I got down to about 2,000 feet above the ground the heat
was unbearable and Darryl, my video and driving partner, was way behind me and I
didn’t want to wait on the ground in misery so I might as well keep flying.
By 1:00 I was 65 miles out; if anything the wind seemed to be slowing
down aloft. My downwind glides between thermals were only about 32 mph, partly
because I was cutting a bit crosswind to stay out of Mexico. We had been warned
that the strip of border north of Laredo and before Del Rio was full of drug
runners who would shoot you on sight, but the development was better over this
area so I took my chances and ran along the clouds over largely roadless areas
until about 2:00 and 85 miles. Four hours, 85 miles, that works out to about 22
miles an hour. Still not fast enough for a world record. I resolved to glide
longer and only climb when I had hit something above 400fpm on the vario.
Normally this strategy doesn’t work for long-distance flying. The game is to
stay in the air, circling in even relatively light lift and letting the wind
work for you. Cloud base had risen to about 7,500 feet, but the thermal climbs
were really slowing down about 1,000 feet below base which seemed weird until I
noticed that the cloud development was definitely smaller and farther apart than
it had been. There were no major cloud streets to fly along under, but I did my
best to get good glides and simply move faster by leaving the climbs when they
slowed at all. This strategy kept me lower, but the winds seemed better and I
was able to glide at up to 35MPH if I used some speed bar and kept off the
brakes as much as possible.
Three p.m. saw me out at about 110 miles. More complex mental arithmetic
supported by the first Little Debbie led me to believe a record was very
unlikely; if I needed to go 240 miles then I was still 130 miles short with four
hours of airtime, maybe five if I got lucky. 22 miles an hour average speed
wasn’t going to cut it, but it would be close if I ran into some more
southerly winds at the end of the day and went a bit faster for the next couple
of hours. Darryl told me he was good with chasing if I had even a chance at the
record, which helped my psyche a lot. A motivated driver is key to staying in
the air, driver suck can be lethal to distance flying.OK, time to race. I
figured I’d hit the dirt like I always do when I race, but Darryl was close
and there were enough roads so why not? 30 minutes later I was about 400 feet
above the ground having skipped two light climbs in favor of gliding fast. The
heat was appalling; I found a very weak thermal maybe 300 feet above the ground
and started working it, I’d rather fly until it started to cool down around
six than land and suffer waiting for Darryl to find me. Soon my light thermal
turned into a ripper, and I happily cranked back to cool temperatures at 6500
feet, still below base but high enough to get back on the speed bar and head
downwind. I continued to fly aggressively and work a little to the east to miss
the Del Rio air force base at 200 miles, the next two hours went by very
quickly. I couldn’t belive it was 5:30 when I looked at my watch, I had been a
total zone of just flying as fast and efficiently as I could.
The ground rises quickly the farther north in Texas you get, and now it
was about 1000MSL and I was gliding to within a 1000 feet of it regularly before
hooking violent thermals back up to about 6500 feet. The strategy had worked; at
6 p.m. I was at about 190 miles and safely clear of the Del Rio air force base,
which meant I could glide more to the west with the wind as Texas cuts into
Mexico. If I could just stay in the air until 8:00 and cover 30 miles an hour
for the next two hours I would have the record.
The Texas Hill Country starts about 200 miles from Zapata, and I could
see that the cloud development was non-existent between me and the first hills.
No clouds generally means no good thermals, but I was at 6500 feet so I went
downwind on glide toward the hills and hoped for the best. Gary had told me that
the wind often really pick up over the hill country, and sure enough I was going
at about 45 miles an hour downwind as the ground rose up to meet me. At about
500 feet above the ground I started to worry; the air had been very still during
the glide, a sign that the thermals are shutting down. At 200 feet above the
ground I saw about 10 birds climbing well maybe 1000 feet in front of me. This
was going to be close, but I could feel the thermal tugging at my glider. I knew
that if I could just stay in the air until I hit it that I would have a shot at
the record. The situation was complicated by a set of power lines downwind of
the thermal; the wind was strong enough that I would probably be going slightly
backwards if I couldn’t get up in the thermal, but then I realized that I
probably didn’t have enough altitude to turn into the wind and land anyhow; I
was either going to hit the thermal and climb out or land going downwind well
above the safe speed limit. Desperate men do desperate things. With teeth
clenched and the brakes held tightly I followed a thin line of zero sink and
felt my glider pressurize and surge hard at the thermal like a shark. I didn’t
wait until the surge ended to start turning, and the birds scattered as I
wobbled my way into their midst, cleared the powerlines and 10 minutes later was
at 6000 feet under a freshly formed cloud. My whole body was vibrating and my
jaw hurt, but I now had a real shot at the record. It was 7:00 and I was at 220
miles. I got on the radio to Darryl and let him know I was back in the game, and
his words were, “GO! GO!” I rode my cloud until it turned to strong sink,
then went.
There were more clouds downwind and I raced toward
them at up to 50 MPH, but sinking like a rock. The terrain below me was wild, as
though God had rumpled up the landscape like a carpet. It would not be a good
place to land a paraglider. At 500 feet above the sharply rolling hills I flew
near Darryl and gave him my bearing and distance, then surfed into the first 200
foot hill with a downwind speed of 45MPH. It was now 7:30, later in the day than
I had ever flown at Zapata but the clouds above me were obviously still forming
so something could possibly work. Darryl filmed me sinking out behind the ridge
and later said, “It was like watching one of those plane crashes on TV. I
expected to see a ball of flame and smoke when you disappeared behind the
hill.” Now down below ridge level I started cursing myself for being in such a
stupid position—again.
There was no good place to land going backwards; the
ridges would surely throw violent rotors with the wind, and the image of
crashing miles from anywhere was on my mind. I checked my reserve handle as I
sunk lower and hoped I would have enough altitude to use it. I came into another
ridge low, surfed up it then pointed my glider into the wind and went over the
top going backwards at maybe 10 with a fair amount of brake on to help the
glider stay stable through the rotor. Shit. As expected I found some ridge lift,
and surfed left and backwards to where the sun was fully hammering a large open
bowl in the lee. Suddenly the glider pressurized, the wind roared like it often
does just before you get worked and the vario indicated 600fpm lift. Normally
this is followed by stronger sink in a rotor, and I waited a second or two for
the sink before the thought crashed into my head that perhaps this was a
thermal—or more likely wishful thinking. A sharp turn in a rotor is generally
a bad idea, it takes your weight out of the center of the wing but the glider
continued to feel pressurized and solid so in one of those endless instantaneous
decisions I cranked a hard left turn deeper into the lee. Something very good or
very bad was about to happen.
At 1,000 feet over the hills I realized my entire
body was again shaking uncontrollably from the adrenaline, and I radioed Darryl that I had escaped but it was the most
terrifying experience I’d ever had on a glider. At 7:45 I was at base at 230
miles, floating near the wispy fresh clouds and grinning like a man who has had
the rope removed from his neck just before the trap floor drops away.
I circled lazily just enjoying the feeling of being high over a beautiful
evening landscape; there’s a fine line between terror and peace. I radioed
Darryl and asked him to check the GPS for the exact time of sunset at our
position; he radioed back that it was 8:45 and then said, “Hey, it’s the
summer solstice and the longest day of the year!” I had been in the air for a
little over ten hours. It was hard to see northwest in the late evening light,
and I wanted to land near a road so Darryl could be my landing witness, but in
all the confusion of getting low twice and fighting out I had totally lost track
of where I was in relation to the few roads in the area. I circled until 8:15
then went on final glide at 45MPH. At about 1,000 feet over the ground I saw a
relatively wide open small valley with a good road, so I glided in and turned
into the wind for a slow backwards descent through a mild rotor into the
shadows. I landed at 263 miles (423K), 8:38, seven minutes before sunset and 10
hours 38 minutes after launching. It’s taken me a few years, but at least for
now I’ve gotten the world record back. And, while flying farther than anyone
ever has on a paraglider is a nice plus, I know that I’ve had the best flight
of my life—so far! In the end that’s what counts.
Notes:
Cecil (last name unknown, good pilot from Brazil) landed at around 400K on the same day as me, then walked for seven hours and spent the night at an abandoned gas station before finally making it back the next day. His radio was dead and he lacked a cell phone, bold effort!
I’d like to thank Darryl Czuchra for driving, Gary
Osaba for his support over the years and finding this magnificent site, Dave
Prentice for the tow (he remarked just after I got off tow, “Hey, I think I
just towed him up for a new world record. I’d like to have it for at least 24
hours!), David Glover for his enthusiasm and downloading my Flytec Barograph and
GPS (all good), and especially all the other pilots and people here at the World
Record Encampment. It’s a very positive atmosphere and a real honor to fly
with everyone here.
Flying in Zapata is very committing; the Owens Valley
in July is the only site I’ve ever flown with the same potential for serious
problems. If you land a long way from a road here you could seriously die of
heat exhaustion and dehydration as many illegal aliens have.
I absolutely will NOT fly into the Texas Hill Country again unless I’m
at base and think I can stay there until I pass over it. On the other hand, if
the wind had been blowing just five more miles an hour I could have gone an
additional 50 miles for perhaps 310 miles. Gary rated my day a “4” on a
scale of 1 to 10; someone will fly 300 miles here, and it will be a great
accomplishment. World records are made to be broken; mine will be, perhaps soon,
so rip it up Dave!
Finally, I wouldn’t
have done this flight and many others without the support of Jeff Farrel,
Chris Santacroce and the whole team at Superfly. They have stood by me through a
lot of adventures. Jim Gunning, Hayes Wheeless and the entire Red Bull team have
given me the freedom to live this life, thanks.
Fly far, land safely.
Escape from the Texas Hill
Country...