Kansas isn’t the first place glider pilots think of when they dream of soaring adventures. Avid soaring enthusiasts congregate in locations that offer mountain waves to boost them to spectacular heights over 30,000 feet, or long hill ranges that provide continuous ridge lift for hundreds of cross-country miles.
Although flat as a tabletop, Kansas broils in the summer—and when it heats up unevenly, there can be some fine days of thermal soaring. When the thermals aren’t popping, glider pilots practice. They practice landings and they practice emergency procedures, such as a broken towline or a towplane engine failure. Sailplane pilots do air work, too, including stalls, steep turns, and slow flight.
One clammy and steamy morning, a group of us gathered at our glider port to discuss the flying weather. There had been periods of heavy rain through the night and early morning, and there were lingering remnants in a persistent haze. The sun would brighten up the prospects, then it would dim when a murky steam drifted in.
“This is supposed to burn off soon,” said one of the gang. “I think I’ll come back this afternoon. There probably won’t be many thermals, though,” and most agreed.
I was a power pilot, too, and had often taken to the traffic pattern for touch-and-go practice when the weather was like this. It barely takes 10 minutes around the pattern, and I had seen instructors take their students out for pattern work with the idea that they could quickly stop if necessary. Today seemed like the same situation, because glider practice flights rarely last more than 12 minutes from liftoff to the return touchdown. I would be next to the field during each short flight, and I could stop at any time if the weather got worse.
“Ready to take up slack,” I radioed the tow pilot after we were hooked together, and then, “Ready for takeoff,” after I completed the final checks of the glider.
The air was rock solid, and the glider slipped smoothly through the whispering slipstream. I knew there would be little lift this morning because the sailplane usually bounced and burped when the towplane dragged it through thermal activity. “Glider has positive release,” I told the tow pilot as the released towline fell away. I initiated a climbing right bank and saw the towplane descending to the left as it completed the coordinated safety separation maneuver.
Stabilized at 3,000 feet above ground level, I practiced steep turns left and right, slow flight, and stalls. After a few minutes of practice I had lost about 1,000 feet. It was standard procedure to set up for landing from this altitude, but when I looked for the runway, it had vanished. The ground was buried in fog that had engulfed the airport in barely five or six minutes. Instead of burning off, the mist had thickened into a cloud layer. I was trapped on top, sliding down from 2,000 feet agl and could not land out because of the town.
Using the whiskey compass, I pointed the glider toward where I thought the airport was. I set up the ship for minimum decent rate and strained for a glimpse of the ground through a break in the clouds. There were no openings or thermals; the morning air was flat and heavy.
I decided I had to break through to see where I was, so I established a sharp descent to penetrate the fog. When the air turned bright white I used the yaw string to keep the glider coordinated. It was about the only indicator I had to help me remain upright through this predicament.
The airstream screeched louder when I pushed forward into a shallow dive. Time crawled. How low was this stuff? Would there be enough altitude to make it home if I did break out? Or would I never break out and suffer the dreaded controlled-flight-into-terrain accident?
Then the ground blossomed 1,500 feet beneath me, and I was close to the airport with plenty of altitude to make an anticlimactic landing. My knees were wobbly when I stepped onto solid ground.
It isn’t uncommon for pilots to tempt their weather limitations because they plan to stay close to the field, just for practice. Power pilots often shoot landings in marginal weather, because they expect to maintain visual contact and
can stop quickly if the weather deteriorates. I had the same mindset in the glider, but a 12-minute practice flight nearly became a disaster.
This flight taught me to reconsider my weather limits, even for just a little stick time in the pattern. I learned how quickly a pilot’s options could be swept away by evolving weather—even on the Kansas prairie.
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