Racing the setting sun and a blend of pleas to call it a day to retire to either home or the EckoBar down on the lakeshore, I set up for Round Three.
This will have to be a short one, lest I lose my ability to select my seat for the bus ride home. With the pilots on our course having differing opinions on how often flying clothing should be cleaned, one should keep in the back of their mind the ability to grab a seat with an open-able window for the hour plus ride home. The key is near window, upwind.
The ridge is still working and folk are maintaining easily in the residual valley westerly. After twenty minutes of beats back and forth, I decide to finally give the top landing LZ a go. Both because the conditions have tamed enough to reduce the combined effect of rotor and compression zone lift AND because if I land in the bailout, any chance to avoid a two front variant of the Battle of Ypres is kaput.
Top landing is a rather new beast for me with early landing attempts by local pilots at our primary sites being accurately described as top crashing. My attempt would be caveated with:
1. Do not go over top of the parking lot as the rotor could still be nasty.
2. Be mindful of the compression zone lift.
3. Keep out of the way of the tandems still flying and landing.
4. Make sure the attempt, if aborted, still leaves enough height to make a bailout of some form.
A few extra beats to ensure no tandems would be landing soon, I start a down wind run.
The plan: hook in low directly from the downwind leg with a diving turn that should have me on the ground before the parking lot, have me in the compression zone as short a time as possible, and leave me a lot of runway if I do need to kill altitude.
The execution:
This will have to be a short one, lest I lose my ability to select my seat for the bus ride home. With the pilots on our course having differing opinions on how often flying clothing should be cleaned, one should keep in the back of their mind the ability to grab a seat with an open-able window for the hour plus ride home. The key is near window, upwind.
The ridge is still working and folk are maintaining easily in the residual valley westerly. After twenty minutes of beats back and forth, I decide to finally give the top landing LZ a go. Both because the conditions have tamed enough to reduce the combined effect of rotor and compression zone lift AND because if I land in the bailout, any chance to avoid a two front variant of the Battle of Ypres is kaput.
Top landing is a rather new beast for me with early landing attempts by local pilots at our primary sites being accurately described as top crashing. My attempt would be caveated with:
1. Do not go over top of the parking lot as the rotor could still be nasty.
2. Be mindful of the compression zone lift.
3. Keep out of the way of the tandems still flying and landing.
4. Make sure the attempt, if aborted, still leaves enough height to make a bailout of some form.
A few extra beats to ensure no tandems would be landing soon, I start a down wind run.
The plan: hook in low directly from the downwind leg with a diving turn that should have me on the ground before the parking lot, have me in the compression zone as short a time as possible, and leave me a lot of runway if I do need to kill altitude.
The execution:
Downwind leg.
The hook through base and final.
Plane out just before touching down.
And voila.
Uh oh...
Chris came over right afterwards to inform me that while the landing was beautifully executed, it was poorly planned. As the site is still prone to westerly gusts, if one were to occur while I was on final, I could have been blown into the parking lot to my right. A wiser approach is to do the same downwind leg, but turn away from the hill then back upwind and drift in at an angle. This gives the best chance of mitigating the effect of a gust. The point was well taken and will certainly be a significant consideration in future top landing attempts.
The day done, the wing packed up, and a windowed, upwind seat of choice acquired in the bus.
So ends the Hat Trick Day - a scratching low save when all others bombed out, fun with clouds and low collapses, and a first top landing. This is the sort of day that builds a better pilot.
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