Silver Star Thursday H&F Flight report, aerology thoughts, and incident report.
mcoppock
https://ayvri.com/scene/gdkzp9gl5z/ckq1opjbt00013b6flb740vb5
I hiked up through an extraordinary “super bloom” flower show, launched at ~3 pm from the 4100’ launch and landed around 4:30 pm at the upper parking meadow “LZ”.. Lift was spotty, intermixed with significant sink (what else is new at SS?) moderate turbulence at inversion base was typical. Lift: Nearly 4 m/s up Inversion at around 5 k. Winds NW, max around 15-20km/hr at inversion. Specific goals for the flight were completing a FAI triangle if condition allowed, and to land in the meadow above the upper parking. No birds were soaring during the pm I was there. Beautiful cumulus clouds ( see Telegram post) marked the usual area of lift along the N-S ridge on the hike up, but unfortunately dissipated just prior to launch. The Ayvri file is interesting, as it well shows the usual “house” thermals, and the thermal wind drift. " The “house” thermal on the ridge west of Sturgeon Rock may or may not be dependable… 😊 Some of the thermals were strong enough that they were initially vertical, then their horizontal component became more obvious. Several of these were strong, and perhaps blocking the meteo-wind initially as they rose off the terrain. Interestingly, a phenomenon occurred several times, that I have not seen before at SS: there seemed to be recurrent areas of lift drifting up the top of the NW ridge that allowed being on bar, in a SSE direction, climbing steadily, without “falling out” of the lift. Perhaps these were simply the tops of large thermals demonstrating the vertical and horizontal expansion with altitude gain.
My conjecture re the over all aerology of Silver Star is that both Coyote Creek basin generates thermals as well as the tree/grassland borders along the ridges. The usual NW flow then pushes lift and sink into the arc of the N/S ridge with the NW ridge and Sturgeon Rock at the extremes of the ends of the arc. My experience has been that dynamic compression of meteo winds by the usual inversion at 4-5 k has not been a big factor in causing higher winds at ridge crest. Generally following the thermals to cloud base means drifting east of the ridge out over the Star Creek water shed. A reserve toss over this area would mean a close encounter with very tall trees. There is less available lift the more the meteo flow is N. SW flow tends to cause less global lift in my experience, and more sink near Sturgeon rock as you might expect.
Landing in the upper meadow has always been iffy (as Jeff Wishnie has pointed out: the “LZ’s” on Silver star would barely be considered reasonable emergency landings for East Coast pilots.) I have, over multiple years, avoided landing there in thermic conditions, preferring the lower ‘LZ”. But one of my goals has been to improve my restricted precision landing skills this year. On Ayvri, you can see the approach with 3m/s sink, and through the tree slot at the east verge of the meadow. Then a 1.0 m/s thermic bump causes me to turn N to extend approach. Then I turn back S (cognizant of spin risk) to allow max length for short final. Over center of meadow at 8 m AGL speed increases to 35 km/hr and 2 m/s up climb begins. I begin flapping to descend, and aim for the trail as there is a small meadow at the trail junction above the main meadow. I land gently on the flowers, but my wing 10 meters over head drifts into several trees. A ½ hr extraction involving climbing 8 meters up and releasing leading edge and multiple lines then follows. No damage appears to have been done to line or wing. “Wounded in dignity only.” The scenario appears to have been a thermal to west or SW sucking air and causing lift: this gave me a tailwind, and lift at a critical landing phase. This exacerbated my poor judgement in attempting to land in thermic conditions at 4:30 pm. Pilot error, pilot hubris, as is usually the case. Note that meteo winds appeared light at tree level.
Lessons learned:
1.Silver Star has reliable house thermals.
2.NW flow causes areas of widespread lift and sink in the Silver Star Ridge arc.
3.Silver Star is usually inverted, in high pressure synoptic conditions, and this makes XC difficult.
4.The historic XC direction has been NW for obvious reasons, but this is difficult given usual meteo wind conditions.
5.I have flow Silver Star multiple times each month since January of this year, and am finding patterns in areas of lift.
6.Once again, I am reminded why landing in constricted “LZ’s” is problematic, especially in thermic conditions. Though I have landed in all the meadows and at the upper parking multiple times over the years, I have neither the skill sets, nor luck to do this safely everytime in thermic conditions. I will once again continue to use the lower LZ, or other outlandings on logging roads or clear cuts, and reserve the meadow “LZ’s” and the upper parking for emergency only landings.
Cheers,
M
Sent from Mail for Windows 10
Michael Coppock
As Koni Schafroth who invented XC tracer, and has been flying for years in Europe, and sustained vertebral fractures top landing in Europe, said in Cloudbase Mayhem podcast:
Koni: "Yeah. I learn
whatever learned in 30 years, this, that paragliding is very, very difficult.
In fact, and my landing spots get bigger and bigger and I have flown 30 years.
You kind of, you, you can learn new things about aerodynamics, for example, or
about other things you would never would have thought its possible, but it
happens. Yeah. I think paragliding is probably more, more dangerous than we
think that we believe.
Gavin: I think that's probably
100%. I think that's for sure. We've pushed the boundaries a bit too far.
Koni: That's , that's the
issue.
So, once again, I see many arguments to roll the dice as little as possible. 😊
M
Michael Coppock
sky...@gmail.com
Steve Forslund
Or land in bigger lz's above and have a short walk
SF
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