THE DUST DEVIL DASH IN A TG-2 Or Doug and Jeff's Great Adventure By JEFF BYARD Each year RESCO (Region 12 Soaring Council) holds the Dust Devil Dash, a one day free distance contest using the CH handicap system. The event is held at Tehachapi's Skylark North on the first Saturday following the Labor Day weekend. The 1991 Dash represented the seventh year that RESCO has hosted this event. This year Doug Fronius and I decided to enter my TG-2 (#54) in the Dash. With a handicap of 1.57 we figured that we wouldn't need to fly too far in order to make a good showing. Besides even if we didn't get very far, with a fifty year old glider we would have a good excuse regardless. With this highly competitive attitude we announced our intentions to enter the Dash while at the Sailplane Homebuilders Association Workshop at Tehachapi on the Labor Day Weekend. This apparently turr*d out to be a bit of a psych job for some of the "glass pilots" planning on entering the contest. By the end of the intervening week the rumor was out that ,it,s going to take a 600 mile flight to beat those guys in that old glider". Ha! On Friday, the night before the contest, Doug along with Dan Benson and his son Christopher (our volunteer crew) flew into the Rosarnond Airport where we spent most of the night giving #54 a super tape job. Using one roll of yellow duct tape, two rolls of yei'low electrical tape and about 40 square feet of yellow poster board we turned the TG-2 into lean mean racing machine. Well sort of anyway. We sealed the wing roots, made fairings for the strut ends, gap seals for the ailerons and tail surfaces, removed the venturi and wing tip wheels, installed two modern electric varometers and smoothed and faired over everything that we could think of. Early the next morning my Dad aero towed us from Rosamond up to Tehachapi. During this shake down flight we saw a noticeable increase in the performance and a definite improvement in the handling characteristics of the glider. By the end of the pilots meeting and weather briefing there were twenty five gliders entered in the Dash. Most of the other entries were modern fiberglass "Triple Gs" (Generic German Gliders). The only other glider in our performance range was a beautiful 1-26 flown by Joe Frick. Dan Gudgel, of the National Weather Service, gave the weather briefing indicating that flights towards the north could get started early but Over development north of Bishop could be expected by mid aftemoon. Flights to the east would not be hindered by over developing clouds but the desert was not expected to trigger until later in the day. Agreeing that a flight further than Bishop was unrealistic anyway, we opted for an early start and a flight over familiar terrain towards the north. Being one of the last gliders in line, we didn't start our tow until about 11:45 am, releasing at twelve rx)on. The contest rules allow a max tow altitude of 3,500 ft agi, we took the maximum and released just south of the field. We continued south over the Tehachapi Mountains checking all of the usual hot spots for lift. Finding very little we moved back north over the valley locating some good lift under a developing Cu. Along with a couple other sailplanes we used this lift to climb up to cloud base at just over 1 0,000 ft. From here we headed out on coarse to the north and instructed our crew to proceed to the California City turnoff on Highway 14. The first twenty miles were covered by flying from cloud to cloud. Just north of the Kelso Valley Airstrip we came across our first blue hole and started getting low. I have been low over Kelso Valley several times before but have always been able to climb out of trouble. When I have asked other pilots what it's like to land there they all just snicker and sheepishly walk away. It must be a nudest colony or something. Anyway we did find a thermal and climbed away under a small wisp of a cloud that eventually became a good sized Cu. We topped out in this lift at 10,900 ft and headed back on coarse. About this time we sighted Gary Barnett (SSS) in his ASW-20. We flattered ourselves thinking that we had actually caught up with him. After a couple of turns in the same thermal Gary left us, headed off to the north and we soon lost sight of him. The clouds that had been marking our lift were now forming further west over the Sierras than we wanted to take the TG-2. Our best hope of getting any further was to find blue thermals along the eastern edge of the mountains. About ten miles ahead there was a high rocky slope facing south west. With a light west wind and the sun shining on the slope there should be some good lift. To get to the slope we flew through some strong sink and even a few rain showers. While in the rain we started wondering about our tape job. The tape held but by the time we arrived over the slope we were less than 1 000 ft above the terrain. The Kern Valley was about 5 miles away and 2000 ft below, with plenty of good looking landing fields. To keep these landing areas within reach we needed to find lift right now. We made a few S-turns looking for the lift. It had to be somewhere close. One more turn and we would have to turn down a canyon and fly towards the valley where any more lift was unlikely and a landing nearly assured. At the last minute the lift came. Weak and patchy at first, then as we climbed higher the thermal strengthened and became well defined taking us back over I 0,000 ft one more time. We could now easily glide to the Inyokern Airport. Unable to contact our crew, we called SSS and asked him to relay our message to proceed towards lnyokern. We could hear their reply saying that they were on their way. The next likely looking spot for finding lift was a sharp jagged ridge with the afternoon sun shining on its west side another 1 0 miles ahead. Enroute to the ddge we had to cross the Walker Pass. Over the pass we again found strong sink, ending any hope of making it all the way to the ridge. We turned towards Inyokern following the terrain contours hoping to find enough lift to get us to the ridge. A few weak bubbles were found on some of the outcroppings running down into the desert and one small thermal allowed us to climb just enough to try for the ridge once more. Again strong sink. We made the ridge but were forced to cling to the east side rather than the west in order to keep inyokern as a landing option. We ended up about 300 ft below the top of the ridge with little better that zero sink. This ridge was about a mile long, located due west of Indian Wells. At our present altitude we could just make it to Inyokern. Flying figure eights on the face of the ridge we were barely maintaining altitude, loosing 20 feet then gaining 50 or loosing 50 and gaining 20. Iam not sure how many beats-along the ridge that we flew before the zero sink finally turned to lift. For a while only 20 to 50 ft were gained on each pass. As we got closer to the top of the ridge the lift got a little stronger each time around. While working our way up we again saw SSS circling high above us in a thermal off the north end of our ridge. Again we thought that maybe we had caught up with him. We found out later that Gary wasn't even flying in the Dash and had taken off after us, passing us the first time that we had sighted him and was now on his way back to Tehachapi. Oh well. Doug mentioned that we probably looked awfully low to SSS, I was thinking "yea no kidding!". When we finally crested the ridge Doug noticed that a bronze marker had been placed on the top. We wondered if it might be a monument to some other poor suckers that had gotten stuck here before. Once above the crest, the lift picked up and eventually we climbed high enough to circle in the thermal. This took us back up to 9,500 feet, some 45 minutes after first getting stuck on the ridge. This was not enough altitude to continue along the Sierras so we set a coarse for Cinder Cone, the core of an extinct volcano in the middle of the Owens Valley just north of Little Lake. Our delay on the ridge had given our crew plenty of time to get to inyokern. Being only a few miles to the west of their position we had no trouble radioing them to proceed north up into the Owens Valley. Enroute we heard Dave Woods (POP) in his ASW-20 telling his crew that he was landing on the dry lake behind Cinder Cone. We found absolutely no lift on our way north. It was looking as though we to would end up on the dry lake along with Dave. We informed our crew that we would probably be landing. By the time we arrived over the dry lake Dave had pushed his glider off to the side making room for us. He gave us the wind and called the obstacles on the approach. We set up a pattern and on the downwind leg, you guessed it, we found lift! Not very strong but steady. After about 25 minutes we had worked back up to 6,500 ft (3,000 agi). From this altitude we could see the dirt strip at the Hennis Ranch, near Dunmovin, 8 miles to the north. With each mile worth 1.57 points we pushed on. At the time we started for Dunmovin, Dan and Christopher were just north of Little Lake with the trailer. We informed them of our intentions to continue. About half way to the ranch strip we heard the sound of jet engines and they were getting louder fast. Doug spotted three F-4 Phantoms to the west and circling to the southeast behind us. Soon they made another pass and we questioned weather they even saw us. Finally the F-4s made a slow third pass to take a good look at this dinosaur in her 1 942 Army Air Corps training colors. We arrived over the Hennis strip with about 1,500 ft and in some more light lift. The next good landing area was an old dirt stdp, behind an abandoned gas station in the little town of Oiancha, located on the south west shore of the Owens Lake. The lift that we were working was very weak (less than 1 00 f pm) and we informed our crew that we may be landing at any time. While trying to gain enough altitude to glide the next 1 5 miles to Olancha, Dan and Christopher had caught up with us and pulled over along side of the highway to watch our struggle. The afternoon up valley breeze was just starting. With this light tail wind and couple thousand feet of altitude we set out for Olancha. Soon the old gas station carne into sight and before long we spotted the strip. Again we had 1,500 ft when we arrived over head. This time there was only patchy lift, mostly just zero sink. Dan and Christopher stayed right below us on this last leg. Doug and I held on in the zero sink long enough to direct them off the highway back into the landing area. Dan surveyed the strip and informed us of some fence posts on the right side at mid field and a Joshua tree on the left a little further down. After trying unsuccessfully for the past hour to climb out of the valley we resigned ourselves to a landing at Olancha. We set up a pattem and touched down at mid field near the fence posts, did a do-si-do around the Joshua tree and rolled to the end of the strip were Dan was waiting to catch our unprotected wing tip. Our flight had taken us 84 miles along the Sierra Nevada, lasting 3 hours and 40 minutes. We pushed #54 about a quarter mile up a dirt road to the old gas station where we spent the rest of the afternoon derigging in the shade of a giant Cottonwood Tree. While we were putting #54 on the trailer, Ray Williams (MR) in his Caproni A21 had been circling in the same area also trying to climb out of the valley. Eventually he to had to land at Olancha. Our strip with its obstructions was too narrow for the large Caproni and he made his landing in an alfalfa field just across the highway. We drove over to help Ray and his crew with the heavy work on their derigging, signed each others landing papers and took off looking for the Olancha Post Office to mail them (there really is one!). On the way back to Rosamond we stopped at Indian Wells for the traditional steak dinner. It is a hard and fast rule that you can't go soaring with out something going wrong with the trailer (especially a vintage trailer). This was no exception today. By the time that we had finished our dinner it had gotten dark. When we checked the trailer we found that we had no tail lights. Using flashlights, pocketknives and recycled glider tape we did some creative rewiring and made some temporary repairs. Thus ending an otherwise perfect soaring day. Mark Mahan in his Std. Jantar 11 won the Dash flying 331 miles to Tonopah Arizona. We placed 14th with a score of 131.9 right behind Joe Frick and his 1-26 who had flown 95 miles east to Barstow scoring 143.6 points. Only three of the twenty five gliders landed back at Tehachapi making this a very successful event. There is still a lot of good soaring left in these old gliders. With the CH handicap system we can all participate in events like the Dust Devil Dash. Why not get out your old glider and come join in on the fun next year?