06 June 2004
Today's flight was an interesting experience. This was planned as a real cross country - an attempt to attend the Smiths Falls Fly-in. The direct-line distance was 22 nm, but the route I chose was 30 nm, taking me over safer terrain on the way. I had full fuel, giving me 3 hours plus reserve. The general direction was south on the outbound leg
The forecasts called for light winds early in the morning and then ten knots out of the south after 1100 local. That looked ideal - little wind on the way down and a tailwind to get back home.
It didn't work out as forecast.
I took off into a bit of a south breeze - about 6 knots. I set up to fly the route chosen and climbed to 1000 feet, trimming the new trim system to 45 mph IAS, (for 40 knots TAS). The groundspeed on the GPS dropped quickly, settling at about 15 knots for a couple of miles, then dropped down to close to 10 knots. At least the air was very smooth. I tried descending down to 500 feet AGL to see if I could find a reduced headwind. There was no change and the air started getting quite rough suddenly; it was like being inside a washing machine. Finally about 5 nm south I was making hardly any progress at all and a quick calculation showed that I would run out of gas before I got to destination.
I turned back, endured the trashing in the now-rough air and got back to Carp at an amazing pace - over 60 knots. The landing was in the grass in-field as the surface wind had increased. I spent some time removing grass clippings from the plane and put it away in the hangar.
In the end I hitched a ride with some friends in their Cessna 177 Cardinal. I was interested to see how rough it felt at a wing-loading of over 14 lbs/sq ft once we were in the air. The answer was that it was quite rough and we bounced around considerably on the flight into the 25 knot headwind at 2000 feet above ground.
I didn't feel too bad that the Ascender didn't make it in that air - the much-heavier Cardinal was getting bounced around pretty good!
Some ultralights flew into the fly-in - Some of the Carp-based Challengers made it, slowing to fly in the rough air and taking over an hour to get there. They didn't stay long, grabbed breakfast and departed for home quickly before the winds came up again.