It’s taken over 10 years for the stars to align to make this possible but I’m really pleased to finally have completed my diamond altitude (and the diamond badge) with a 16,404 ft gain. It’s even better, to be able to do it on the east coast, without a wave window (below 18kft), and in a club glider (the same BRSS club LS6 I did all my other badge flights in). There probably aren’t too many of those…
Daniel Sazhin called me out on Facebook so I thought I’d emerge from under my rock to share a bit of the story 
.
Towards the end of last week, I’d been watching the weather while talking to Piet Barber and Shane Neitzey as we were scheming over the approaching cold front. The skysight wave forecast was suggesting strong conditions and it looked like a promising day for the Diamond climb. I returned from a conference late Friday and spend Saturday playing catch-up on work and preparing for the flight. Completing 5000 m (16,404 ft) of altitude gain is quite difficult when you have to stay below 18,000 ft msl and the ground is ~600-700 ft msl here and takes some special consideration.
I looked at the wave forecast, google earth, and altimeter errors to formulate a plan. I would fly from Front Royal (KFRR) and tow to the Masannutten ridge. I would then test the ridge and work my way down to doing a pass between 1100-1200 ft msl (~500′ AGL) and 120-130 kts over a field at the steep base of the ridge. I’d then pull back up onto the ridge and work my way back up to the top of the ridge. A challenging timing maneuver you might do once a decade but I wouldn’t make a habit of it… I’d then fly the ridge to the end of the Massanutten, thermal up and push upwind to Harrisonburg, Virginia to join the wave. I’d have to climb up to between 17,800 ft and 17,850 to ensure I met the minimum gain while leaving margin to stay out of Class A airspace and risk invalidating the flight.
Sunday morning, I was still going a bit slow getting ready being partially on Pacific time still. I picked the glider up from Shane Neitzey‘s house (thanks Shane for letting me leave it there!) and spoke to Daniel Sazhin for some final words of encouragement. I arrived at FRR midday, assembled, and started the process of getting into the glider. It’s a bit of a production to get all the gear ready for this kind of flight (lots of layers, electric heated socks, chemical shoe heaters, water, bathroom, food, oxygen, 2x loggers, etc.) and get it all to fit into the glider comfortably. Thank you Thomas Ward and Tim Moran for the help getting ready!
I launched and it was a bit of a wild ride – I released into the incredible lift in the lee of the ridge and climbed a few hundred feet so I could push further upwind to join the ridge. When I got onto the ridge, it was absolutely smoking. I ran down it a few miles while to scout out my field for the low-point. The airport near the ridge I had initially planned to use was full of crop. I picked a nice field at the base of a very steep part of the ridge – perfect. I did a few practice passes before diving for the low-point. It was quite busy trying to watch speeds, altitudes, and the ground. I pulled up onto the ridge and connected with the lift and effortlessly re-joined it.
I ran down the ridge ~40 mi to the end where I thermalled up and found the thermal started getting really smooth and stopped drifting with the wind (instead, staying in a fixed location) – wave! I decided I’d go as high as I reasonably could here before pushing upwind to the next wave (there was only weak wave forecast here, I thought the better wave was going to be upwind).
To my pleasant surprise, it just kept going. Crossing 16,000 ft, I started to wonder if it might actually happen… by 17,000 the lift had dropped off to ~1.2 kts and I was getting a bit concerned that it might die off before I get to the goal. Fortunately, it was softer but kept going steady. I crossed 17,800 ft indicated and started my descent by 17,835 ft (inside my pre-defined window). I had decided before that this was the only goal for the day and immediately headed back to the airport to mitigate the chance of anything messing it up (like a logger failure from extending the flight). I landed, saved off both logs, and launched on a second flight to go try it again just in case there was an issue with the first.
I repeated the same process on this next flight but the sky had overdeveloped and blocked the thermals making it very difficult to climb back into the wave. I worked my way back up slowly to ~13-14,000 ft and cruised around for a bit before heading home to land just a few minutes before sunset. Thank you Matt Vosika for being the duty officer and kindly waiting (hours) for me to land and helping me pack up.
There’s still some risk that there are unexpected issues in the validation but all-in-all, an incredibly successful day with thanks due to many people (some listed here and others who know who they are :)).
Congrats to Shane Neitzey on getting a boomerang flight in and Piet Barber for some excellent soaring the same day.
You can find the flight logs here:
– Diamond flight: https://www.onlinecontest.org/…/gliding/flightinfo.html…
– Second flight: https://www.onlinecontest.org/…/gliding/flightinfo.html…
I should probably share a bit about the world championship too sometime… for now, back to work and back under my rock…