Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 14, 1991 TAG: 9104140192
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It was perfect glider weather along the mountain ridges above the Blue Ridge Soaring Society's field near New Castle. Before the day was over, 17 glider pilots - three of them from the Roanoke Valley - would make history.
Their 626-mile journey on the wind and heated air would be counted as one of the 10 most memorable record flights in 1990. The award was given earlier this year by the National Aeronautic Association at the National Air and Space Museum.
The three valley pilots are David Cole, 41, an engineer; Penn Smith, 55, an accountant; and Jim Frantz, 34, a business manager.
They went to Washington to receive diplomas from The Federation Aeronautique Internationale.
Although the pilots rose up from the field of the Blue Ridge Soaring Society, the Soaring Society of America got the certificate.
David Cole said that rankled a little, but it didn't take away from the flight and how it felt to be part of it.
It was what glider pilots - who almost invariably refer to their crafts as sailplanes - call a "1,000-K" competition, and this was the top.
The flight went from New Castle to the Interstate 77 Tunnel near Wytheville, then to Bedford, Pa., and back to New Castle to what the pilots call the Sinking Creek Bowl. Flight times varied from 7 1/2 to 10 hours.
The Virginians were joined by pilots from states stretching from Massachusetts to Ohio to Florida.
The aeronautic association's newsletter said of this round trip by glider: "Few glider pilots ever achieve a flight of this length and for 17 to do so in one day is remarkable."
Cole said it was also exceptional because it was the first time a "1,000-K" contest had been declared during a soaring competition.
The weather synopsis was important. The high winds from the northwest, hitting the ridges and rising, meant speeds of 120 to 140 mph.
It involved flying without engine noise 50 feet above the trees on the ridges of the Allegheny Mountains and sometimes using thermals, or hot columns of air rising from the ground.
These wind-on-the-ridges conditions occur in the spring and fall and then only on three or four days a year.
They were just right Sept. 17 and the Blue Ridge Soaring Society, which is 25 years old, got some mention out of the flight.
There are other gliders sites that develop these conditions, Cole said. They are the Nevada high desert and a site in South Texas.
The New Castle field, he said, "is probably the only place in the world this flight could have come from."
Now, he said, the Blue Ridge Soaring Society "has achieved national recognition."
The three pilots talked recently about the flight, and sailplaning in general.
Cole said it is not true that a glider pilot experiences hours of serenity, listening to the wind rush past, marveling at the beauty of flight.
A glider pilot is very busy.
"It's totally absorbing," he said. "To fly a sailplane, you have to fly it all the time."
It takes the mind off everything but flying the plane and "it's the one thing I've ever done that will do that," Cole said.
There is, he said, nothing he can imagine "that could approach the experience of that 1,000-K flight."
There is a "rush of sensation" involved, he said. For 48 hours after the flight, "my mind kept flashing back to scenes along the way."
Frantz was at the field at New Castle, but he had no plans for flying and the award-winning flight "sort of caught me by surprise."
The other pilots were excited about the weather forecast, and Frantz signed on.
He got his glider ready "without any idea that we were going to pull it off."
When it was over, he was a little stiff because his plane has "the smallest cockpit known to man."
"It was neat," he said. "You could feel a kind of camaraderie."
"Everything is pilotage," Smith said. "It was stressful physically and mentally."
Ed Byars wrote an article for Soaring magazine about the flight. He summed up the stress: "Each time you sink and your belly almost brushes the trees, you must turn out from the ridge and yet have the guts to turn back closer when the areas of lift come. Not for the fainthearted."
There was extra stress for Smith. At one time he seemed to lose the wind and air and was near to setting down in the trees. He smoked his only cigarette of the flight after he got out of that.
Smith said he had been asked if he would fly the same route again. "My answer is: hell, no." But if the question were would he fly in different record flight - "My answer is: hell, yes."
by CNB