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Gliders take to air over Rover

Friday, April 29, 2005
By CLINT CONFEHR

"Sunday will be the best of those days," Senior Meteorologist Mike Girodo said at the National Weather Service forecast center this morning when asked about race day conditions at what's also known as Eagleville Gliderport.

Hosting the event at Puckett Field is Mike Poe, who concedes attendance depends on weather. Aviators may start gathering to assess the day at about 8:30 tomorrow morning. A pilots' meeting at 11 a.m. will be followed by a line-up on a grid at the end of the field. Launch times may start about noon, the Franklin resident said.

Bill McFarland, proprietor of Eagleville Sailplanes, said that depending on conditions, "There could be 12 to 20 planes and their crews, and some may not be able to land here because of the wind."

That's during the race from one column of rising warm air to another. Few gliders must "land out" from a race.

Curtis Spraker, a regular at Shelbyville Municipal Airport's Bomar Field, puts it this way; "If you see a buzzard circling, you can ride the thermal," a column of rising warm air frequently found over dark fields heated by the sun. "You can follow a buzzard."

Race results are determined after downloading information from so-called black boxes on the planes that electronically record flight times, places and speeds. A laptop computer's program compares data and computes handicaps based on planes' age and design.

Regardless of the forecast, Sarah Kelly, 25, proprietor of Chilhowee Gliderport east of Cleveland, Tenn., is coming to race anyway and said only one of the planes racing from her airport had to land in a field during a recent contest when two others landed at nearby airports.

T-Top is another grass field near Rover, a part of Bedford County seen by U.S. Gliding Team aviator Leo Benetti-Longhini of Tullahoma as having good conditions not only for landing in farm fields, but for developing thermals -- columns of rising warm air used by pilots to gain altitude.

"There's pretty good soaring there," Benetti-Longhini said of broad, flat land in northwest Bedford County. "There's a lot of rocky terrain there, so it has a lot of fields to land in. It's largely agricultural, which is good for us."

And there are few lakes which -- because water holds its temperature longer than rock -- means plenty of dark-colored land to be heated for development of thermals.

So, rocky terrain is good for gliding. It may drain faster, and sunshine will heat thin layers of topsoil, Benetti-Longhini explained.

That could be good news for pilots tomorrow, although Girodo's forecast isn't encouraging for the weekend and it's outright wet for today. There's an 80 percent chance of rain this afternoon, and tonight some 1-2 inches may fall.

A break from rain this morning will probably be followed by a downpour this afternoon, but "the worst will be tonight," the senior meteorologist said.

"Saturday, as you get to the afternoon, there may be a chance of it clearing out," Girodo said. "The ground may still be a little wet."

Meanwhile, Benetti-Longhini can attend the race only on Saturday, so he's bringing his glider with an engine. It retracts and the self-launching plane then appears like and flies like a glider.

Saturday's predicted high is 62 degrees. Sunday's is 68.

Cloud cover of 20-30 percent -- as forecast for late Saturday -- can provide good conditions for soaring, Benetti-Longhini said.

Sunday's skies are to be clear over Bedford County, the weather service said.

Today's winds are south and southwest at 10-15 mph. Saturday and Sunday, expect northwest winds at 5-10 mph.

That may or may not be enough to bend or break up a column of rising air, and it's unclear whether the winds will create ridge lift and waves of wind over or beyond a ridge.

There are hundreds of pages of rules on sailplane races, Poe said. But typically, a triangular course is laid out, meaning there are two turning points for the gliders. That means on one leg there'll be a headwind and on another there's a tailwind. The length of the race depends on conditions, but usually they're at least 100 miles around a circuit.