FLF Bange & Sullivan Trip

FLF Trophy Retrieve Story

Date of Flight: 28 Jun 2009

         This flight was Brent Sullivan's idea. He is my hangar mate and popped the question "let's go up to Fault Line and get the trophy?" as we were getting our ships ready for an afternoon of X/C. It was looking like a pretty good day, with consistent, soarable weather and not too much wind. I said "what the heck, let's give it a try". As I recall, we got off tow by noon. We headed straight out towards FLF, as we knew we would have to push to get there and back while the convection was working. Brent was in front of me initially and by the time we got out to Rockdale, he was south of my position. Gus Rasch in WS, a DG303, called us and asked what we were doing and decided to follow, playing catch up. Brent and I pretty much flew parallel tracks to Georgetown, he to the South and I to the North. Gus took the South route behind Brent. At Georgetown I was a little ahead, so we decided that I would be the one to land at FLF to retrieve the trophy. I put the nose down and ran it up to 100 knots, burning off my altitude to try to get down to pattern altitude by FLF. I more than succeeded at this as I arrived with only about 600' to fly the pattern. No problems, but base to final was lower than I like. Mental note: always know the altitude of the airport you are landing at. 

         The folks at FLF knew we were coming from our radio chatter, and had set up a gag. They took an old television antenna (rabbit ears) and put a burned out model rocket and some tin foil on it and brought it out as I was sitting in the ship. I took one look and said "if I had known what it looks like I wouldn't have bothered" . This brought howls of laughter from the folks at the field. They then showed me the real trophy, which was of the cartoon character Tweety Bird with the head broken off and scotch taped back on. Oh yeah, now THAT was worth the flight. NOT! 

         I took a quick tow to 2K then slowly and painfully climbed to 7.5K, all the while chomping at the bit to get on course home. Brent was circling above the field for part of the time it took me to climb out, but left before I finished the climb. Gus had arrived at Georgetown as Brent was leaving FLF to head back. Gus turned around and headed back first, followed by Brent with me as tail end Charlie. I knew I would be late getting back and was worried about the lift quitting before I could get on final glide. As I approached Granger lake I had to make the choice of going South, around the lake to avoid the dead air downwind, adding substantial distance to the trip home, or get high and try and fly over it, hoping to get some lift on the other side. I chose to fly through the dead air and went from 7K down to 3.5K before getting past the lake. Once I crossed the dam, the air came alive and I soon found lift back up to cloud base. The trip from there to Brenham was uneventful. I just kept pushing as hard as I could to make good my ground speed. Somewhere between Brenham and SCOH I got a little low. The lift was dying and I was getting worried that I'd be landing at the prison farm. I had about caught up to Brent by this time. I kept getting glimpses of his wings shining ahead of me as he would thermal. He was only a few miles ahead. He saw me struggling and kindly steered me to his thermal where we both got final glide back to SCOH. I was real happy for directions to that last thermal. All in all it was a really memorable flight. 

Brian Bange