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 Sunday 3/6 the forecast looked TOO GOOD. I was lucky James had his new computer going good enough to confirm what the blip maps were saying what I thought I was seeing. 500 fpm to over 7000! I probably would have went to Mag but it was taking Mel farther from his home and the forecast did say SW 240 deg.(Thanks MEL!) That should be great for Heavener and flying back into the better conditions in Arkansas and sorta toward home. Charrie asked where will an SW XC off Heav take you and I said around Clarksville. (Warren had flown there a couple yrs back)All the way to Heav it was L&V and we were driving into the over cast. At I40 Mel said we could head to Mag. It looked L&V all the way to Hev. Mel even saw NE just out side of Hev and mentioned Panorama or Buff. At the LZ it was south. We got on top and it was SSW. It would hit 20 mph in the peak but it was mostly 10-15 SSW. It was the cross that had me concerned. The buzzards were drifting down the ridge. John Conner showed up and we all set up. I got launched 1:25. Didn't work the
ridge very good (as usual), flew through two thermals and got below the top just before the slot launch. Just when I'm thinking how this is fixing to get hard I punch into a decent bit of up and crank around this gets me some breathing room. The rest of the flight is easy after that. I get a couple of grand over before I fly out to the feed mill about a mile out front. Loose a 1000 getting there. Hit a nice one and it drifts back over launch I get to 5000 at kitchen canyon had two eagles show me the last 2000'. One was fully mature and the other had no white at all. The immature one dove on the mature one from 50' off my wing tip. Running him/her off. He returned and commence to climb on me. He got even and I thought he was going to make a dive on my wing.(He had that look like a dude in a bar get's when he thinks your looking at his girl) The thermal had gotten broken or I had lost it so i took this as a sign to leave this joint. I got down to 2900' just before sugar loaf Mt. and hit some trash that I worked back up to 4000 while drifting to the NE. The Pousti voice in my head said to blow this off and fly straight to Sugar Loaf but I wimped and played it conservative. (which means slow) When I glided over the peak on the east end of Sugarloaf I got reminded why the peaks are where Mark P rocks. I hit solid 600-800 fpm to 7000'. There was no cloud but I had clouds about 5 miles down wind toward Greenwood. I had just heard from Morton and he reminded me about his flight to Planters Peanut IN Ft Smith. This was a nice reminder to bear east to miss Ft Smith airspace. When I got to the clouds I was down to 4500' but it was big and easy under the clouds. I thermaled to 6000' then glided to 7200'flying straight which put me east of Greenwood at hwy 96 and 10. I sort of cut the corner on Chaffee but stayed HIGH and came out over Charleston at 6000. I saw a few GA planes but they were all real low. The clouds were widely spaced and mostly lining up to the east. The SW wind kept pushing me out in to the river valley so I was flying cross wind trying to stay with the clouds. I lost the battle and ended up out in the river valley working some broken stuff. It looked like I had Ozark Airport on a glide. This would make it easy for Charrie to find me. I got there with 4000' after hitting some stuff coming out of a nasty 1/2 mile square rock quarry. There was a cloud a couple of miles north of the the airport against the Boston Mts. that had been there for 30 min. I decided I should check it out and then head back to Ozark. It was still on. I got to 6800' thought about gliding to Zins but it's hid so well in those tight valleys I couldn't see it and chickened out. I toyed with the idea of going back to Ozark but decided I need to use this altitude in a decent final glide. I couldn't take advantage of the SW tail wind I flew almost dew east for 12 miles. I picked a huge field and got there with 500'. Dropped a streamer it was showing due south light. Had a ok landing after having to flair early and climbing out a little high. (I missed that the field was sloped, i was going down hill.) It was 4:30 and I was 73 miles from Heavenver. I was aprox 2 miles north of the first Clarksville exit on I40 coming from Ft Smith. I talked to James on the Mag repeater and he got Charrie heading my way. Roy called from the top of Hev to see if I was covered. We got home at 9 pm. My truck is still in the LZ. Thanks Mel for securing my truck and talking to the Tuckers. Anyone headed to Heavener from Fayetteville or Ft Smith? I would take a body ride, help with gas and I promise not to talk about my flight if you don't want me to.
Fly for Fun,
Stump
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