Here is another video by Randy Teel of last Sunday's 14,000' wave flight.  This one runs from launch to over 14,000'.  At the top you can see the wave bar cloud and the foen gap out in front.  This conditon is always our guide to the wave and makes it easy to contact.  I now have 9 wave flights in Talihina.  We are getting really experienced with the Talihina wave and more new comers are joining us all the time.  I don't understand why more TSA pilots are not interested in near home wave fly9ing.

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Here is a link to a U Tube video by Steve Michiliik of last weekend's flyihg at Talihina.  Sat. was ridge on Buffalo Mtn.  Sun. was best wave day so far with climbs to 14,200'  Dnjoy the nice work Steve did here.

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Remarkable footage capturing falling Alsomitra vine seeds, which use paper-thin wings to disperse like giant gliders. The seeds, which are produced by a football-sized pod, can glide hundreds of metres across the forest. This ensures that the seeds fall far from their parent, giving the next generation of vines a head start.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8391000/8391345.stm

What an interesting and exciting day in Talihina, OK. After all
seven gliders got into the wave, we have a big change in the
weather. The winds shifted out of the west and the foehn gaps
started closing. Everyone hurried down through couple holes
before the sky became completely overcast.

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12 pilots showed up in Talihina this past weekend for more Buffalo Mtn. ridge and Kiamichi Valley wave soaring.  The usual crowd plus three new guys had a great weekend of flying.  I'm estimating total hours flown this weekend was in the range of 60 hours.  The total would have been higher but 5 guys did not fly on Sunday.  Good question!

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We had another excellent outing to Talihina, Oklahoma. A cold front passing through late Sunday night produced great northerly flow allowing us to work the long Kiamichi Ridge. We had 5 gliders out, Randy Teel and Gary Guinn of the Tulsa Skyhawks, Dean Forney of North Texas Soaring and Steve Graves and Omri Kalinsky from TSA. Dick Goodgame was good enough to fly his Maule over from Mena, Arkansas and tow for us. 3 of us arrived late Sunday night and camped out right on the airport, while 2 of the pilots showed up early Monday morning. After a quick breakfast/pilot's meeting at Pam's Hateful Hussy (the local diner), we started assembling our gliders around 8:00. Around 9:00 Dick showed up with the Maule towplane and we started staging the gliders at the south end of the field. We started launching shortly past 10:00.

Unusual strong south winds in August produced wave conditons over the Kiamichi Valley this past weekend.  On Sat. winds were very light on the ground in the valley but blowing 20+ mph on the ridges.  Omri Kalinski, Randy Teel and Grant Cheadle were able to take advantage of the ridge conditions with Randy eventually making his way across the valley to contact the wave south of Albion about 10 miles south of Buffalo Mtn.  Randy was able to climb to 8300' in wave on Sat. and remarked about the strange cloud layers over the valley that made conditions more optimistic than they were.  Chez Cheadle dazzled the group with grilled center cut pork loin, rolls, corn, choc. and Coconut cream pie for dessert.  I didn't arrive til 9:00 pm Sat. night, but there was still hot dinner waiting for me.  We all camped at the airport and had cool south breezes to keep us comfortable under the August sky.  And, a beautiful night sky it was too.

Sunday was clear and the ridge was working, so the four of us were all on the ridge by 11:00 am.  I found a good thermal about 11:30 and was able to climb to 2500' agl.  Randy and I started attempting to work out across the valley, but it was too early and the thermals were not going high enough to make the jump.  By 2:00 we were able to climb to about 3500' agl and the thermals were frequent enough to get us across the valley to the vicinity of the wave.  A brush burn produced the thermal that put us into wave.  The only clouds were the wispy rotor clouds to mark the leading edge of the wave.  Lift was smooth and reanged from 1-5 kts.  At one point Omri, Randy and myself were circling and climbing in the same rotor between 5-9 kts up, at the same time.  That was interesting.  Omri and I landed between 4:30 and 5:00 pm to pack up and head home.  We left Randy still in the air.  He called at 7:30 pm say he had just landed.  That guy just never gets enough air time.  It was a great weekend of soaring in Talihina.  We did ridge, thermal and wave soaring on the same days, two days in a row.  The campfire dinner was, again, five star and the stars were 10s.  You can't get the distances you get in the flatlands, but the adventure and variety is second to none this close to Dallas.  You guys and gals, especially you hot shots should come give it a try and see if you can do the challenge of going from a 1200' ridge ten miles south in low level thermals and  contact wave.  Come try it sometime.

11 gliders and 14 glider pilots showed up this past weekend, April 25-26, at the Talihina municipal airport for another crack at the Kiamichi Valley soaring conditions. This was the most gliders we have had join us to date.   Pilots came from Houston, TSA, Tulsa, Ok. City, Rogers, Ar. and Wichita, Ks.  Bob Holiday came from Wichita and brought his motor glider.  TSA members included Andre DeBaghy, Jeff Baird, Omri Kalinsky and Gerry Kiefer.  Dick Goodgame brought his Maule from Mena, Ar. and did the towing for us.

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Sunday, Feb 15, 2009

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