Sailplane Posts North American Distance Record

It's nice to see the record on the west coast for a change:



-------------------------------------------------------------------
AVflash Volume 11, Number 16b -- April 21, 2005

-------------------------------------------------------------------

SAILPLANE POSTS NORTH AMERICAN DISTANCE RECORD
A California glider pilot has been quietly working away at
breaking the North American distance record, with a flight of
1,212 miles in 13 hours and 17 minutes on April 3, breaking his
own unofficial record of 1,130 miles set eight days earlier.
Gordon Boettger flew a 33-year-old Kestrel 17 sailplane along the
rising wave of air on the downwind side of the Sierra Nevada
mountain range during a lee-wave storm. He reached heights of
27,000 feet, and the canopy of the plane was sometimes covered in
ice. Boettger, 37, soloed in a glider at age 14, flew off aircraft
carriers during eight years in the Navy and now flies MD-11s for
Federal Express.
http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archive...ll.html#189618