Untitled - Quo Vadis

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