Flying the Morning Glory Dust Devil Dash Hitting the Silk New ...

Keep Soaring
The Dust Devil Dash
By Keep Soaring’s ACE Foreign
Correspondent, Jim Staniforth.
Since 1985, the Dust Devil Dash has been held in Southern
California on the second Saturday in September. The initial race
was from Crystalaire, in Pearblossom. Since 1986 the event has
started at Mountain Valley Airport in Tehachapi.
The Dash is the only sailplane contest I know of where
everyone lands out. The goal is to head in whichever direction you
deem best, and fly as far as possible. Scoring is handicapped straight
line distance from start to landing, using the Carl Herold handicap
system. Distances are measured in Statute Miles, still the norm for
comps in the USA.
Cruising the Palisades above Bishop, in the blue on Thursday. JS
In the old days, landings were verified by landing witnesses, and
signed landing cards returned to the Competition Director from the
nearest post office. Now all the distances are calculated from the igc
files posted on the OLC. There’s no scoring for speed.
The weather leading up to this year’s Dash looked promising.
On Thursday I flew a 570k O/R. That was just the first day of the
cycle of good weather.
Normal cycles here run like a sawtooth wave: Good, better, best,
rubbish! This cycle just had more moisture than normal.
On Friday I didn’t really feel up to it but launched anyway.
Went through the start and immediately got low over a dirt strip
that nobody has looked at for a while. It looked good.
October November 2009
Stumbled into some lift and felt good to be getting going into
improving conditions, but then I didn’t notice an F-18 until it was
almost on top of me! Not good. Later on, after cruising in some
convergence up the Kern River Valley, it was time to leave the
middle of the mountains. Barely made it to the Sierra Crest. OK,
time to give up and turn home… After a quick visit to hikers on
Mount Whitney! How unusual to land at 4PM.
Jim Payne flew an 800k cat’s cradle, outlanding at Inyokern.
Saturday looked good but with a high chance of overdevelopment.
I wasn’t prepared for the Dash and volunteered to
crew for Thorsten Streppel, flying his LS-6a. Thorsten had never
done a “straight out” task before. Because of my last-minute
decision to crew, we didn’t have his SPOT programmed to send text
messages to my phone. It’s impossible to use cell phones at normal
cruise altitude, and once NE of Bishop there’s poor phone coverage
for much of the route on the ground.
Ground to air radio communication is dodgy, with mountain
ranges getting in the way. Having text messages of your pilot’s
position as you try to follow would be fantastic.
There were 24 entrants in the Dust Devil Dash this year, even
including one Australian!
Just a bit of OD on the Sierras near Big Pine. KMA
Morgan Sandercock from Hunter Valley was flying his
Sparrowhawk. A total of five Sparrowhawks entered. Two pilots
were doing not only their first comp of any kind, but also their first
cross-country flight!
Keep Soaring October-November 2009 Page 16