Destination Crazytown!
Given Tony’s successful weather calls for downwind days, I decided to finally latch onto one. Both of my ships are out of annual and going through some changes this year, so the Grob seemed like an interesting challenge to me. After all, the multiplace records set by Arnold Peters were recorded in 1970, 47 years ago! Crazy, right?
I called one of the top guys I can count on with the guts to fly the Grob XC with me, Bob Holliday. Since my wife Lyn was out of teaching school for the summer, she volunteered (with great excitement) to pull the Grob trailer and chase us. Our day started at 6 AM with checklists and packing equipment. On the ramp I studied the weather potential and picked Ada, OK. I filled out the declaration forms and Keith Smith signed them. That would give us enough distance to set 3 new records; however we needed to get going pretty quick. The blipmaps were showing that the westerly winds were going to push the good stuff to the east in the afternoon.
I find most things that Bob gets upset about to generally be something we can always laugh about. He has a special way of putting things. During the hard parts of the flight (and there were aplenty), things just didn’t “suck” — they really, truly, monumentally sucked! The two of us cussed like pirates 5 miles north of Norwich on our first low point at 1200 AGL. Bob locked onto some lift and saved it with a 3–5 kt thermal. He kept saying “we are NOT landing this in a field!” Good thing he felt strongly about that — I couldn’t have agreed more! We may have insulted a few clouds along the way, but we certainly couldn’t blame the insanity on hypoxia. You know, flying at an oxygen-rich 6000 ft max.
After crossing into Oklahoma, the clouds started paying off. We found better lift and were able to really start flying well our way past Blackwell and down to Stillwater. When we hit Stillwater, I told Bob where we were and he said “Oh #$@%, we are NOT flying over there, that’s a dam sink hole!” So we took a more southerly route and spent some time trying to get back up high. Looking west I could see the CU dying and weaker conditioning coming right at us. Arriving over Seminole, OK, I could see Ada (our goal) just 30 more miles ahead. It looked so close! However, the clouds were now just wisps and we couldn’t get enough lift to provide peace of mind that we could make it. The route was socked in with trees all along the entire way. Had we been able to get back up to 5000 AGL and had consistent thermals, we would have made it, but after 10 minutes trying to work fading CU, it just wasn’t meant to be. After a 4.5 hour flight, Bob lined the ship up for the runway at Seminole and landed in comfort, while I readjusted my back for the 64th time!
Lyn arrived only about 30 minutes later. During that time Bob and I chatted with the line people at Seminole who had lots of questions for us. Nice folks, great airport — but no putting it off any longer. The next thing to do was to disassemble the BEAST. It took 2 full hours and lots of reflection on “what the hell we were thinking” before we finally were able to get the wings separated. Loading the glider in the trailer wasn’t much better — lots of muscle and patience were involved at a time when both were a scarce commodity. I took the wheel and set my sights on Bricktown in OKC to treat Lyn to some Cajun seafood for chasing us. After dropping the Grob off at Sunflower and parting ways with Bob, Lyn and I arrived home at 3 AM. In hindsight, a hotel would have been the better choice. The next day we re-assembled the Grob and again it didn’t disappoint us in its ability to be overly complicated!
In the end we did improve one state record, but missed on the other two that have stood for 47 years. Arnold Peters, WE SALUTE YOU. Till we meet again!
Grob XC Team: Bob Holliday (pilot) and Jerry Boone (nav)