What I learned:
Waterways in the Delta are surprisingly good triggers
Luck has a lot to do with a good flight
New mental model for thermal centering? (Still need to talk to people to figure out if it is called anything)
Writing a recap of a flight takes a lot of mental energy!
What I could have done better:
Don’t meander when going downwind unless there is a really clear reason - it is much easier to trace a leaning trigger when you are flying directly inline with the wind.
Preparation!
Pee tube,
Radio at lower volume
Tethered battery pack
Make sure that instrument airspaces are set up properly…
What happened:
Forecasting:
Little was done. I checked windy and xcskies and saw strong but not nuclear sw winds and widespread lift starting early.
I saw rain coming near sunset, starting from the NW and moving SE.
I didn’t look much more closely because I thought I wouldn’t be able to fly due to work. Once I started work however, I realized I was caught up enough to play a little hooky in the afternoon. With the early forecast and evening showers/wind I figured I would take off around 11/12 and then land by 2/3 to join my meetings via phone.
Getting to launch:
Sebrand and Catie picked me up - thanks a ton! It’s nice to drive with friends to launch. We missed an exit because I wasn’t doing a good job of directing, but no one sweated.
As we pulled up to Ed Levin, we knew we were late. Dan F had already made the move towards Mission. He moved a large distance in 10 minutes of flying, so we knew he was going fast. It looked like it was tricky conditions because some people had already landed at the LZ and we could see Tristan barely maintaining from the 600’ hill.
We decided to drive up to the 300’ hill rather than hike because we wanted to get up as quick as possible. On our way up we saw Ben driving down. It’s always great to see friends at the flying site. He said the combination of how he felt and the wind/forecast didn’t inspire him. I really appreciate that Ben gave the report from his own perspective. I respect Ben’s limits so if he had instead just said “it’s windy as heck” that may have implanted negative thoughts for me.
We get up to the 300’ , and it feels on the lighter end of wind and perfect south direction. Seb and Catie are interested in hiking up the rest of the way to the 600’ to maximize their chance of staying up, but I decide to stay at the 300’. “For glory” is what I tell them as my reasoning. After all, the 300’ hill is the first place I flew when I was training with Jesse at Lift paragliding, so there is something special soaring from the 300’ even if it is just to stay in the air for an hour and land back at the LZ.
The other reason I wanted to stay at the 300’ is because I once had an experience as a wee P2 when we drove up to the 600’ hoping to have a flight before the storm got there. By the time we set up, the 600’ was nuking, so we easy-bagged it and drove down to the 300’ and by the time we pulled out our gliders there, it was nuking at the 300’. Not my brightest move back then, I probably should have stayed home that day… in any case, I didn’t say that out loud to Seb and Catie because it seemed unnecessarily negative to add into the hive mind that is paragliding.
Seb and Catie decided to stick to the 300’ as well. And we began unpacking our gear. By the time I had my harness inflated, the wind increased significantly. At first it felt like it might be a gust, but it lasted 20+ seconds, giving me enough time to consider packing up. Then the conditions changed. The wind dropped off to ~5 mph. The wind sock dropped down. Up at the 600’ I could tell the wind sock there was still much more full.
Start of the flight:
I finished setting up my gear, but was concerned about the huge swing in wind conditions. I saw Dan Z take off from the 600’ hill. I lifted up my wing but the air was swirly. Since I didn’t want to rush a launch from the 300’ hill (after all, if you don’t hook the first bit of lift you can be back at the LZ in 2 minutes). I let the wing collapse and settle to the ground. I reset the wing and waited for the wind to get steadier.
See Tristan’s video here for some footage of the launch starting at 2:20: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJscuCeYsmA
I lifted up the wing again and didn’t have to take any steps to get going up. It felt like I had about 10mph forward speed (note, I switch speed units a couple times in this write up… it’s tough being an American in a world of measurements), so I wasn’t to worried about the wind. I set my course for the ridge towards the 600ft hill and was climbing steadily.
Dan was maintaining but not climbing quickly until he went one ridge south. The climb he caught looked great (see about 5:30 in Tristan’s video)(I later talked to Dan and he said it was a memorable climb especially for Ed Levin.) It took us up at 3+m/s with less drift than expected. We were quickly above the peak height. I could see a few hang gliders setting up at the 1750’.
Notably, Flyskyhy had autostart turned off so I manually started the track log during this thermal.
I was keeping up with Dan’s climb rate, but he was maintaining a few hundred feet above me. I saw a cloud forming to the south and decided to try and fly to that in the hopes of finding even better lift. I underestimated how far I would need to push upwind to get to the source for that cloud and decided to turn around.
By that time Dan had climbed another 1000ft+ and I couldn’t find the core of that thermal again.
First move:
Dan and Pam got on the radio and made a plan to go North. While I felt low compared to them, I felt high for Ed levin and decided to follow from below, hoping I would catch a good climb.
Sure enough I caught a great climb at Monument peak. Before I knew it I was at close to 5500’ and well above both Dan and Pam. I lost the core for a bit, but wasn’t worried. Airspace is at 6000’ and Dan and Pam were getting far so I didn’t want to lag behind while trying to top it off. I went on chase. ( I am the orange line)
Dan took the left line across Mission Peak and Pam took the right line along Calaveras road.
I was closer to Pam so I stayed near her in case she found a good climb, I could join her. As we began to get closer to the 680, Pam hooked more right. Dan was going towards Sunol, and, from my perspective, getting low compared to Sunol peak. I decided to try and fly a straight line to Dan since Pam’s line went toward a bluer section of sky to the east and also because I had more confidence I could find a climb on the Sunol/Pleasanton ridges.
When I crossed the 680, however, I wasn’t doing as well anymore. I saw beautiful clouds above me, but couldn’t figure out where their sources were. When I realized one of the sources was the shoulder of the Sunol ridge, I had drifted too far to push to that climb.
The Crux:
After crossing where 680 heads west-to-east, there was more west in the wind. My original plan of following Pleasonton ridge wasn’t working great and the first thermal I caught started to frisbee me out of the mountains.
I heard Dan and Pam say on the radio that they were going to land because the wind was strong.
Since I had been doing a bunch of wandering circles in 0.5m/s climbs, I had a decent measurement on wind speed and was reading 20-25km/h so I wasn’t too worried about landing safely as long as I could find a big field. But I was struggling.
This was the crux of the flight for me. I kept taking wandering climbs and staying about the same height as Sunol and Pleasanton ridge, but on average I was getting lower.
First I saw some large soccer fields and decided I would look for something there. Didn’t find much and I drifted further north. The baseball fields looked small and so I set up over the water treatment plant next.
The treatment plant probably wouldn’t want me landing there… but it was a nice open area of gravel and a decent looking trigger. Sure enough I found a small climb and by the time I lost the core on that climb I was halfway over the town.
I could see a healthy cloud-street over by Blackhawk south of Diablo that looked within glide and so I decided to go for it. I made it to the foothills quickly because of the strong SW flow.
It’s worth noting how lucky I got with the Livermore airspace. In February, I had turned off my Class D airspace because it is annoying to have on in Roldanillo. But alas I had forgotten to turn it back on when I returned to the states. Even though it looks like I intentionally skirted around the airspace - I had no clue!
Out of the frying pan, into the wind:
I was confident above Blackhawk because I had a beautiful cloud street that would take me past the Diablo range. The inversion above the clouds kept them nice and thin and I wasn’t worried of cloud suck or overdevelopment.
But my downwind speed was ~70km/hr. I did a couple turns and calculated 40km/hr wind. I got worried - was I getting myself into more wind than was advisable? Was the wind stronger below or stronger up high? Once I got past Diablo would the wind settle down or increase?
Seeing so many windmills beyond Diablo reminds me how consistent the confluence can be back there 😱.
I decided to press on and when I got past Diablo I was relieved when my ground speed was down to 55km/hr. I found a climb right at the toe of the next town.
No more cloud streets, but a healthy amount of clouds. I looked out ahead of me and saw some of the purest flatland flying ahead of me. In Colombia earlier in the year, I flew flatlands, but those had a surprising amount of relief compared to the Central Valley.
Here, I looked at my altitude: ~4000ft. Height above ground 4000ft as well.
Past the hard part! But what next?
The day had great climbs but also consistent sink at around -2m/s when in the blue sections. So I was tempted to try and connect all of the closest clouds.
I saw the next cloud off at a slight angle to the wind so I flew at a similar angle. But by the time I got close to it I felt I had drifted past the possible trigger and I found myself circling in light lift. I didn’t want to end up in the same situation I found myself at Sunol.
I made the decision to, instead, fly directly downwind to whatever cloud was on my way. It seemed far, but I had a great tailwind to help out my glide ratio.
The next big cloud was right at the edge of what I now know is called “Frank’s Tract”, a large body of water in the delta. Beyond that cloud, the clouds thinned out even more and the terrain looked wet. I couldn’t tell if there were public roads going to the islands in the delta. I had no clue what my next move would be.
My first thought was to fly to that cloud at the toe of Frank’s Tract and see what would happen there.
I got to the cloud quickly. I’m not used to flying downwind like that. It’s game changing to look down and see a 15:1 glide ratio.
I had gotten low, but not too low to find the good part of the climb and before I knew it I was climbing to 6k’ over a body of water. I tried to text my colleague at work and tell them that I wouldn’t be able to make the 3pm meeting, but I didn’t have any service…
All downwind from here!
The clouds were much thinner at this point but I decided to stick with the same plan. Fly directly downwind, that way whatever lift I found I could take my time with and be slow with it.
The next part of the flight went fast.
I ate a half a RX Bar for a snack.
I charged my phone.
I couldn’t pee since I was unprepared for such a long flight.
Sometimes I would find climbs in the blue sections, other times I wouldn’t get a climb until I got to the next cloud.
I did some calcs in my head to figure out how far I had gone. If my downwind speed was about 60km/hr and my thermalling speed was 20km/hr, I was probably averaging 35km/hr. I had been flying for 3hr, so I had gone about 100km… yay! This will be my first 2pt 100k.
I had been passing highways and towns I had no idea what they were named.
I was doing great going straight and I had a healthy cloud ahead of me , but I got scared to fly straight under it since it wasn’t as flat as the other clouds I had flown near. So I skirted around the right side.
After that I made a bad decision to try topping off in some blue sky when a great cloud was just beyond. By the time I lost the core on the blue sky, the bigger cloud had drifted downwind and was dissipating. I went over to it and wandered under its smaller thermals for a while, just drifting downwind at 20km/hr.
Folsom lake was getting close, but I was losing the plot.
I broke my rule and veered a little left because I saw some housing tracts that looked like good triggers.
I looked to my right and a beautiful cumi was forming directly downwind of a small pond! (A wiser pilot would have seen that coming) Unfortunately trigger was already too far upwind to make it back to it.
I was too low to see what was beyond Folsom and I started to notice the wind increasing.
I thermalled with some swallows but didn’t get very high. Fabian jumped on the radio! Hi Razi are you flying? Yes I am! But I’m getting low. Sure enough I didn’t feel like comitting to the trees and terrain around Folsom lake when I was only 1000ft agl.
So I tried pushing upwind to find the lift that the swallows were playing in, but didn’t get much. I set up for a landing and tried to get to the front of the grass on full bar but wasn’t moving very fast.
I released bar about 40 ft from the ground and came straight down slowly. I killed my wing when I landed, the grassy field I found had very little turbulence, so no big issue.
Getting home:
I rosetted up my wing and got to communicating to find a way home.
Unfortunately I had my half a RX bar and my external battery on my lap and I lost both in the field when I landed. I tried looking for them but I forgot exactly where I touched down and the grass was tall enough to make it hard to search. I feel worse about littering than the lost property :/.
Fabian offered to drive me to Sacramento. This is the first time I met Fabian and he was super gracious to spend some time with me. He brought his kid and made it a park outing so that he would take his kid to play before bed.
A friend had been looking at my track since Radha shared it with him, so I had Fabian drop me off at my friend’s house. There, I got a tour of the house and a home cooked meal!
Then Kevin Dutt picked me up from Sacramento. We had a great chat about some of crazy adventures of the past. Everything from cross country in the Sierras to being chased by cops near Pleasanton.
Kevin dropped me off at Antioch Bart and I borrowed a mask from a really nice women who was off to work the night shift at SFO.
Of course Bart was a hoot and included people yelling out obscenities and people tripping over each other.
When I got to my home Bart station, Radha picked me up so I didn’t have to get my gear wet walking home in the rain.
It took more than 5 people to get me home in one piece today! I am super lucky to have everyone be so Interested. Also, as I reflect on the day, I am reminded how the adventure to get back home can be so much fun in its own right.
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