On 8/15/2015 10:29 AM, son_of_flubber wrote:
Snip
Here's the thing. I fly 3X as frequently as most XC pilots at my club. For
the most part, they only fly on 'good XC days', and the coincidence of
'good XC days' with 'days off' is infrequent in Vermont. I'm not sure that
I would/should want to ever fly that infrequently.

I have fun flying on a lot of 'marginal days'. Timing my launch to coincide
with the 1-2 hours of workable lift on a marginal day is fun.

"Roger that!"
- - - - - -


So sure, I'm trying to extend my endurance so that I can fly real XC
flights. But I hope that flying on marginal days does not lose it's
appeal. If at some point, I join the ranks of XC pilots that only fly
infrequently, I may very well quit the sport at that stage. Maybe when I
reach that stage, I won't have to fly so frequently to maintain my
currency. I'm in no rush to quit the sport, so my present fun and
extremely slow progression to fly XC seems a good way for me to enjoy the
sport for many years to come.

Do XC pilots ever recover the joy of flying on marginal days?

Recover? Are there any that lose it (as distinct from those who try XC only on
days when bricks can soar)? Some of my most memorably fun & satisfying flights
have been on what, at preliminary best guess, appeared to be anywhere from
unsoarable to pure survival days. A few of those turned out to even be
awesomely good XC days, though most were pretty much as they looked, though
soarable. And - and here's a key point - if a person takes a tow (or snap)
every chance they make for themselves, then tries to hang on until they're
forced to land by absence of lift, over time they'll begin to learn that it's
more often soarable - XC, too! - than not, regardless of one's
"pre-experiential" preconceptions.

I obtained my license in Maryland (Cumberland) which is where I also made my
first landout, but actually learned (as in, taught myself through reading,
brain-picking and flying-until-forced-to-land) to fly XC in the intermountain
west. Out west was where I began to realize a person's mental outlook was
fundamentally important to how (fast) they clumb the XC learning curve. Many a
time at my home club I'd take tows on what I soon began to call "Eastern days"
when fellow club members demurred due to (low cloudbases, preconceived
notions, etc.). Most of those days proved soarable, and XC soon became part of
those days' picture...and yet I'd typically return to find almost no one else
had towed or even stayed up long locally. That was in the late '70's & early
'80s and the local soaring scene (wonderfully enough) has changed hugely from
those unenlightened days of yore.

Point being - and *especially* for relatively inexperienced-in-time soaring
pilots - odds are your post-release-experience will prove considerably
different (likely, better) than your ground-based guess...IF you hoist
yourself aloft, and IF you seek to hang on by your fingernails (should it be
necessary). Eventually "hanging on thermal-by-thermal by one's fingernails"
morphs to "reading what a day is likely to sustain" and - voila! - low-stress
XC, with short retrieves (if necessary).

One memorable cloud-free day yielded ridge-generated tops to ~ 2.7k' agl
(measured relative to the flatlands), and, after several ridge hours, a real
sense of joy when a buddy eventually towed in a similar-performing ship.
Mutual "boredom" and his residence's airpark field about 12 miles away,
resulted in us deciding to "go for it." If we didn't find a thermal away from
the ridge, our "convenient out" was an abandoned/former airstrip at a private
school halfway to his residential airstrip; in any event we'd retrieve each
other, if necessary. An hour or so later we were back on the ridge, savoring a
gratifying little XC. Had it not been so late in the day, we could've likely
gone considerably farther, despite the low thermal tops & absence of clouds,
because often, the toughest part of going east from Boulder was reaching I-25
due to irrigation and - on "somewhat breezy days" which that one wasn't -
wind-induced thermal suppression until some miles away from the foot of the
mountains.

On another day (which began foggy), I drove the the field late "just because
of pent-up demand" despite murk and visibility of perhaps 5-8 miles. It was a
weekend. No one else wanted a tow, but I found rigging help...and about 4
hours later came back from Rifle, CO, on what turned out to be a booming day,
on both sides of the continental divide, while never experiencing more than
*maybe* 15 miles visibility (which for westerners can be psychologically
unsettling, it's so uncommon). Everyone had gone home, and per the departing
towpilot, only one other tow that day. I corralled a passerby to help me
derig, and drove home hardly able - judging from the invisible mountains and
murky sky in my rear-view mirror - to believe the day's soaring experience.

And, yes, there were those days of multiple tows when I simply refused to
believe my failure to be able to remain aloft was due to the day and not me!

YMWV,
Bob W.