Diamond Distance Kowbell Win

This was my 5th Kowbell attempt and my first time to win the coveted Kowbell. This was also my first successful Diamond Distance flight after many attempts over the last eight years of flying straight-out distance flights.

The forecast seemed to indicate that downwind was not the way to go for distance that day. As is often the case at Kowbell, a crosswind or even into-the-wind flight would probably yield more distance. Cloud possibilities were poor to the south and southwest, while they looked excellent to the west and northwest. The only challenge would be bucking across a 15-knot north wind. Following the typical north-wind Kowbell strategy, I declared Clayton, NM as my goal.

West Across Kansas

On course it was obvious pretty soon that going much further south than due west from Sunflower would lead to the blue. So west I continued, following the general path of US Highway 50 out of Hutchinson toward Garden City. Climbs were good and the low points weren’t too low. There were lots of dust devils the further west I went and once or twice I was able to use one.

I noticed the wind had started to swing from NW to more of a NE heading. By now I was at the Kansas–Colorado border and I could see a north–south line of thunderstorms to the west, rapidly approaching its shadow. I turned to a more northerly heading over eastern Colorado to stay out in the sunlight. Once or twice I had to cut back east to stay out of the shade as I tracked north toward I-70. I was able to get texts out to Leah to let her know about the change in course. She was glad to hear it—the emergency alert over FM radio had warned of strong winds and hail from the storms I was going around.

Past Personal Bests

Past the five-hour mark I started to wonder how much longer the day would hold. I was already past my personal longest duration flight in the Cirrus—my all-time best had been 6.5 hours. Speed was about 40 mph, but while the day had softened, it really didn’t seem like it was dying. I kept pushing north and eventually arrived over I-70, right as I had cleared the storms to the north with endless sunshine to the west.

Now was decision time. This area of Colorado features endless landable terrain—dirt fields as far as the eye can see, relatively flat, almost no paved roads or towns once away from the interstate. The wind was still out of the NE, giving me a small tailwind component if I turned west. Diamond Distance from Sunflower was 500 km. Genoa, CO lay to the west along I-70 and would put me well past that mark.

I turned west. The day continued to hold, the thermals weak but workable, and I slowly worked across eastern Colorado toward Genoa. When I finally landed, I had my Diamond Distance—the goal that had eluded me for eight years of trying—and somewhere in the SSA tracking and the OLC results was the Kowbell Klassic win.

Leah, my trusty crew, had a long drive to meet me in Colorado. We got the glider in the trailer and headed home with a lot to talk about.