US midwest soaring

On Jul 31, 9:52 am, nimbusgb wrote:
What is the soaring like in the US Midwest? From the SSA state records
I see that the distances covered and the speeds over standard courses
seem less than impressive.

Are there significant weather, airspace or other factors that limit
the soaring in Minnessota, Illinois, Indiana and the central midwest?

I also notice that the club fleets in these areas seem to revolve
around a couple of 2-32's and a 40 or more year old two seater with
very few glass ships in evidence, not promising for someone facing an
international assignment in the area

Ian M

Ian,

where in the midwest will you be working? the soaring in Iowa can be
very good. there is usually a span of excellent cross country soaring
in the spring and fall. If you look at the records for Iowa you will
note that Matt Michael flew a 400 km handicapped triangle in his
Woodstock in 2003! That was an unusually good weekend of flying but
the conditions can be good for nice cross country tasks. Part of the
lack of highly impressive records is that the cross country scene is
not well developed (at least in Iowa). There is a handful of us
getting out there in our vintage wood gliders, but we are working on
getting more pilots away from the airport. If you look to the north,
Minnesota has a well developed cross country culture. Jim Hard is
pretty well known for doing many Diamond Distance flights in his 1-26!

Cross Country through the middle of the summer can be dicey. the
humidity is usually higher so cloudbase is lower and lift is often
weaker than in the spring and fall. this combined with 10 feet tall
Corn and fully grown soybeans eliminate a lot of land out options.
With my lousy glide performance i really have to fly carefully during
this time of year.

But the nice thing is that in the spring and fall all of those fields
are open. In general the whole state is just a big flat runway. lift
is strong and cloudbase is usually higher. on my silver duration
flight in April i made it to 7700 AGL at 4:50 in the afternoon.

so no, you wont find 1000 fpm thermals to 18000 feet, but if you can
hang out in the weak lift and keep your land out options open you can
have a lot of fun.

check out some of our clubs flight reports at www.knightglider.com/flightreports.htm