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WINNING ON THE WAVE I IKE PUTTING a man on the moon, I climbing to the top of Everest or tstrudging to the South Pole the Kûttner Prize was a race - a contest of endurance and skill in an extreme and unexplored environment. The goal? To fly 2,000km - 1,243 miles - in one direction, replacing the power of combustion with the power of nature. lt was a prize rooted in the very beginnings of gliding - and a dream thar was only realised within the last year. When soaring was in its infancy, pilots believed that wind on the lee of hills and mountains hugged the ground, producing downdrafts. Hans Deutschmann and Wolf Hirth, two Cerman glider pilots, serendipitously discovered a powerful type of lift while soaring over a small hill in Silisea, Cermany, in 1933. In the flimsy wooden and canvas glider Deutschmann and Hirth were thrust skyward gaining a lot of altitude rapidly. Joachim Kûttner, a young scientist and talented glider pilot, was the first to study scientifically this phenomenon on the lee side of mountains. During a gathering of soaring enthusiasts in a small competition he convinced the pilots to carry instruments to record their flights. When he analysed the data, Kûttner confirmed his suspicions that wind flowing over mountains generates waves very similar to standing waves or rapids in a river. These days, every glider pilot knows that - like a river flowing over boulders - wind encountering mountains forms a series of standing waves downwind, and on the front edge of each you can find very smooth, powerful lift. But it was Kûttner who coined the phrase "mountain waves". He spent his early career exploring them. When a wave is really pumping, its power is palpable. The sound frequency of mountain waves is too low to hear but the pressure fluctuations generated can be felt through your body as a deep resonating hum. The sub-audible vibration can build tension like a bow being drawn across the bass note of a cello. ln 1937, Kùttner stood below such a wave in Riesengebirge, Cermany. Dwarfed beneath the huge cigarand saucer-shaped clouds, ignited by visceral excitement, apprehension and desire to explore how high the wave reached, Kûttner took his fragile low-performance wooden glider into the jaws of his first giant wave. Flying in front of the cloud in an open cockpit he soon caught the ascending air. The altimeter was adequate for most aircraft of the day: few ever flew higher than its maximum of 10,000ft (3,048m). Soon it became useless as he wound it off the dial. Most pilots begin breathing supplemental oxygen at 10,000f1 but back in 1937 the body's oxygen requirements at high altitude were poorly understood and Kûttner flew without the luxury of oxygen. At 12,000ft (3,658m) the air temperature dropped well below freezing but Kûttner remained in lift and continued climbing. At 20,000f1 (6,096m) his extremities started to lose circulation and began feel very cold, 36 Opening picture, overleaf: Soaring wave 30,000ft above New Zealand. Photos like this, taken by Marty Taylor with the help of Gavin Wills, will be used in a highguatity calendar available from www.exiremegliding.com and oxygen deprivation would have started to affect his judgment. lmpelled by the explorer's desire to go where no one had been before and bv the scientist's curiositv. Kùttner was able tô over-ride his extreme discomfort, but he was unaware of the real danger stalking him. With less oxygen his judgment became blunted by euphoria. At 23,000fr (7,010m) and enduring -35'C Kûttner realised that he could no longer feel his frostbitten feet and that his fingers had turned blue. Such extreme cold would have forced many pilots to abandon the flight but the decision to retreat only came when Kûttner realised he was seeing two suns. The creep of cognitive impairment due to oxygen deficit is insidious and a pilot can often fly without noticing the signs that something is not quite right. Seeing two suns was a clear-cut sign that something was severely wrong. At this point Kùttner turned away from the lift and rapidly descended landing in a small Polish village a long way from his start point. His physical ailments soon healed but he never recovered from his desire to understand and explore the power and beauty of the mountain wave. Sierra Wave Project Two years after this flight World War Two intervened, putting Kûttner's plans to studv and explore wave on hold while he flew as a test pilot for the Cerman aircraft industrr,. After recovering from the horrors of the w,ar, Kûttner joined the Sierra Wave Project - a meteorological programme run by the US Air Force to investigate mountain wave. The Sierra Nevada is an old mountain range that has been battered and eroded by winds ploughing into it. After countless millions of years the ranges are shaped more like the top half an aerofoil than the jagged, mitred peaks of young mountains. The smooth shape and gentle curve of the Sierra Nevadas commonly trigger a spectacular lee wave. Once in the wave a pilot can expect serenely silk-smooth lift without even the slightest hint of turbulence. However, wave harbours an unpleasant, less benign, bedfellow: rotor. On April25,1955, Kûttner and his colleague Larry Edgar were on a routine investigative flight when they encountered the full furv of a demon rotor. After several hours' flying between 30,000ft and 40,000ft (9,144-12,192m) the pair descended: Kùttner first, then Edgar. At 17,OOOft (5,'181m) Kùttner was ripped into by horizontal sheets of wind that catapulted him within seconds of his glider's maximum speed. Fast approachingVNe, Kûttner pulled up and climbed vertically. He still had too much speed. The next option was a highspeed stall. After dropping nearly 1,000ft he recovered only to be hit by another gust. He must warn Edgar. lt was too late. The same belt of destructive turbulence had consumed Edgar. Porrerrul rotor clouds were forming all around hinr. L'nsighted by the rapidly forming cloud he could not execute the same escape Kùttner had performed without losing contr()l of his plane. The terrific power of the rotor brut..rllr flung Edgar pastVNr with a force of I lC and rvrenched the wings off his glider - hurling him out of the plane. Edgar's parachute opened itself while his feet were caught in the cockpit. The shear forces were enough to have torn him in two. Luckily, the onlv casualties were his boots, helmet and gloves. The enormous C-forces blinded him and the hose from his bailout oxygen bottle was destroyed. Out of the plane, his ordeal was not over: instead of drifting gently toward the ground under the resistance of his parachute, he was grabbed by the rotor, which vaulted him higher. Miraculously, Edgar survived the landing without breaking a bone. Despite the potential dangers, the tug of Sailplane & Gliding
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