After the 1975 open class nationals in Hobbs, (which was know for being one of the wettest seasons in history) my father let me fly the family Kestral back home with another friend in his father's Nimbus II. We took off from Estrella, headed west for as far as we could get into California. A huge dust storm was rapidly approaching at Desert Center so my friends dad insisted we land immediately. We back tracked and landed as our crew parents were waiting for us on the ground at Desert Center. I rolled up to the trailer and the Kestrel being the big Libelle that it was, was in the box inside of 5 minutes. The Nimbus, with the extra wing pieces, wasn't so quick. We got the tips off, the tail, and the canopy just as the duststorm hit. Since we couldn't get the center panels of the wings off in time, we pulled the campers and trailers in front of the Nimbus to block the wind and six of us laid on the wing of the glider for 45 minutes as we literally got sand blasted. I'm not sure how strong the wind was but we were concerned that the campers and trailers could blow over on top of us.

After the storm had passed, there was two inches of dust inside our camper despite having all the windows and vents closed. It came in thru the little vents in the bottom of the sliding glass windows. We had to have the glass replaced on the camper because it was so badly pitted. I'm told there are still remnants of dust from that storm in the fuselage of that Nimbus, forty years later.

Barry