JR AeroTow 2005: The Last Man Down

I was sitting with my good friend Art Pesch, this is a fun fly for anyone after all. Art and I use to fly R/C targets for the military and he and his wife Carol graciously take care of me for the JR Aerotow weekend. It was Friday about midday of day two. The waiting line for a tow was moving along nicely, running about 20 tugs per hour, to altitudes that looked to be between 1000–1500 feet AGL. Though it was hot the sky was filled with a stratus cloud ceiling that started at around 2000 feet. Some guys were finding holes that went a little higher. The average flight looked to be about 10 to 15 minutes for the 1/4 - 1/3 scale wood and fabric ASKs, and MiniMoas, and maybe 20-25 for the slick glass ASH 25s and their like.

I hadn’t been doing much yet, just sitting in the shade of the Illini Glider Club hanger catching up with old friends and trying not to sneeze, when a hot and slightly sunburned JR Team member Steve Rojecki sat down nearby to catch some shade and a cool drink between tow sessions. I’ve known Steve since the 1984 Las Vegas T.O.C., (the team of Reed Falcon, Rojecki, Rojecki and company won top honors beating team Stearman, Stricker and Lash by 354 points out of 12,000) and Art has known Steve since way before that. Steve’s the kind of guy that doesn’t waste a lot of words and always says what he means, in a refreshing kind of way.

After a few minutes of idol chat, Steve just looked at me and said, “Chris, what are you doing here?” Well, as much as I had been looking forward to the trip and flying Peter Goldsmiths 1/4 scale ASK18 again, I didn’t have a real good answer for him. I stammered out something like, “I came to visit Art” and, and “Peter and Caroline G expect me to write something worth reading about this event, so … I had to be here.”

Why was I here? Lord knows I had plenty of work waiting for me back in Maryland. It’s not often I get 4 days straight to go play with airplanes these days. I hadn’t finished my 45% Horten sailplane (it’s real cool, don’t miss it next year. Peter you’re still going to need a bigger motor than in your 1/3 scale Cub). I’d been here more than half a day and I hadn’t flown once yet. What had I done today?

Well I had set up my little portable workshop. That was something. There was that nice German Engineer working in Michigan, who couldn’t stand to be without his models for more than a few months so he had them shipped to the U.S. so that he could come have a great time at the 2005 JR Aerotow. I heard some people thought he had one of the nicest sailplanes here. He had one little problem. His transmitter battery was not talking to the RF board so he couldn’t fly. He wandered over to my mobile workshop to ask if I could help. Silly question. I had every small handtool I owned right at my fingertips. One butane soldering iron, a little flux, a tiny bit of solder and a four handed, “no … you hold the wire that gets really hot, I’ll do the soldering” later we had him back in flying form ready to go.

That was one good reason to be here.

Once the iron was on the table and warmed up it didn’t take long for the next customer to come along. A flyer from Montreal had a little elevator servo problem. I don’t understand why he had soldered the servo leads to the extension lead; a better connection I guess. It sure made it interesting reaching down into the vertical fin to resolder the new servo in place. You have to give the man credit, he drove all the way from Canada in a 40 foot fuel tanker truck, with a 4 meter sailplane as co-pilot. We never did figure out where he stashed it in the truck, it was too long to fit in the sleeper cab.

This year at the JR Aerotow, the schedule called for some cross country flying for all day Thursday June 2 through midday Friday. I have flown models from moving vehicles from time to time. Art Pesch and I once flew aerial targets from a 450 foot Italian Frigate, sailing off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia. I highly recommend it! Riding shotgun as a pilot’s helper and spotter out on the JR Aerotow closed course was almost as exciting. Despite some uncooperative weather, there were several flights of 5-6 miles on Thursday and Friday’s flights were even better.

The JR Team had a great system setup for the cross country fun, and the Monticello Piatt county airport is the ideal place to do it. Wide open spaces with very light traffic on open country roads lined with endless fields of soybean and corn. You can land almost anywhere. A couple of rented Chrysler Sebring convertibles were more than up to the task as chase vehicles. It was Friday afternoon now and since I had no customers at my mobile workshop, Art and I joined up with Rusty Rood, of Pensacola, Florida and his 1/3 scale ASK 18 and went cross country.

Rusty was staring straight up; the Hanger 9 giant Sukoi, towing his ASK, was aiming for a small opening of clear blue, snuggled between two dense banks of cumulonimbus clouds. A few seconds later I heard Steve Rojecki, our tow pilot, casually remark to no one in particular, “I can’t see it anymore”. I looked away from the scene unfolding 2000 feet above and glanced at Steve’s face. To his credit and the credit of all the other tow pilots that make the JR Aerotow such a great event, he wasn’t about to release until Rusty said he was high enough. I could still see the Sukoi so I started giving some commands, “a little left … a little left … a lot of left”. Finally both planes passed through a cloud and Rusty cut his glider loose. “Let’s giddyup” he said.

Art was waiting in the Sebring with the engine running and the passenger door open. I took Rusty by the arm and herded him towards the open door. Several times along the way we both lost sight of the ASK. After a tense second or two we found it again and made our way to the waiting car. Rusty slid into the back seat, got his bearings and we headed out onto the course. A few seconds later we were zipping down the road trying to catch up to the ASK that was heading East, rapidly disappearing into the afternoon haze.

To safely fly cross country you should have at least three participants - a pilot, a driver, and a spotter. The pilot is in charge because in addition to flying, he directs the driver when to speed up, slow down or “stop NOW!” As spotter, my job was to keep an eye on both the glider and the road ahead while giving the Pilot some general directions. Potential landing sites were everywhere, with only the occasional farm obstacle.

The course we were navigating followed the local county roads in a 6 mile counter clockwise rectangle roughly two miles East to West by one mile North to South. The chances of flying a few laps were looking good. Rusty's thermal sniffer was beeep-beeep-beepbeepbeeping. Art was driving the Chrysler like he knew what he was doing. “Turn coming up in a quarter mile … turn 30 degrees left, hold that heading, roads clear right, turning now.” One mile, two, three, four, interrupted with a high-pitched beepbeepbeeping … “Hold up, hold up here let’s work this a while,” Rusty said with his relaxed Florida drawl. Too soon, we’re down to 1000 feet, sitting on the shoulder of the road watching the ASK circle left then right. The thermal is dying when Rusty shrugs and says “let’s giddyup, there’s nothing for us here.” Art snaps the rains on the Sebring and off we go.

We’ve made the final turn and are heading back towards the airport field. The ASK is cruising at about 55-60 mph just off to the right of the car. We are down to about 100 feet now, as Art reads off the distance, “ that’s six miles”. Time to make some decisions. Do we keep pushing for another few tenths or should we land? There’s a farmhouse and some buildings coming up in another quarter mile or so, guess it’s time to land. We pull to the shoulder and Rusty greases her in a little off the road in soybeans that aren’t even up to the canopy rim. This flight would be the best of three attempts today, 6.2 true air miles.

Even though we didn’t win the overall distance or single flight distance competition, we sure had an exhilarating couple of hours trying. I had yet another reason for being here.

Saturday morning we arrived at the field in anticipation of another beautiful flying day. Once again I set up my portable workshop and was ready for any challenge that might come along. I still hadn’t flown yet and after the cross country adventures of yesterday I was definitely ready for some stick time of my own with Peter G’s ASK 18.

We started the day flying off of the main runway which runs North and South. The heavy clouds from the day before had blown away during the night, but as Bob McDaniel used to say, “there ain’t no free lunch.” The clouds had been replaced by a stiff wind blowing in from the South West. By noon, CD Peter Bergstrom decided it was time to move to the wider East/West runway and let everyone practice flying with a little crosswind. So finally, after being here for a day and a half, I hooked up for my first tow from Johnny Berliner and his ZDZ120 with ugly stick option.

Up we went. If reaching high altitude in minimal time is what you want, Johnny and his tug can deliver. No it’s not scale, but when you have 10 anxious flyers waiting to get aloft there’s no time to waste. We reached a comfortable height for my aging eyes and I cut loose and banked away. Once free, I assured him “I’m off. Thanks for the lift.” And before I had finished trimming out the ASK for a gentle hands-off climb into the wind, Johnny was back on the ground hooking up for the next tow.

I flew off and on for the rest of the day. In between flights, I helped on the flight line, shot some pictures for Caroline G., and snacked on a sausage with onions and peppers from the Illini Glider Club grill. Best of all, I had the pleasure of helping Mike McConville’s dad (Jim?) catch a thermal. Mike’s father has been around the hobby a LONG time – he’s been flying model airplanes since the discovery of balsa wood - but he had never flown a triple whopper size sailplane before. And, though he only had a few minutes alone with the ASK, he walked away from the flightline with a mighty grin on his face. I was starting to feel like I belonged here after all.

It was getting late. Most of the tow pilots were off nursing their sore thumbs and burning eyes, but not Peter G. There were still a few of us diehards waiting for the day’s last tow. The ever-ready Pawnee fired up and Peter took to the sky once again… does the man love this sport or what? When he wasn’t looking I slipped his ASK into the dwindling waiting line, in between a MiniMoa and a little aerobatic Fox. With the dedication that only a true love of aerotowing can provide, a tired Peter pulled each of us aloft in turn. By now, the valiant Pawnee was running on fumes and it was time to land, but everyone who needed a tow got in one last flight.

The evening weather was perfect – 70 degrees and a clear blue sky. The wind had died down some, with a constant flow coming from the West. When I released from the tow line, just under a towering Cumulus cloud at about 2500 feet, I punched the button on my stopwatch I kept finding lift, circling, riding straight into the wind on roller coaster like waves of air. 5 minutes went by then 10 and still I had some good altitude, exceeding all my earlier flight times. The sun was setting, and I realized that it was very quiet and still. Finally I came in and made the best landing I think I have ever made. I dropped the ASK’s spoilers and looked down at my stopwatch, 17:24.

I didn’t know it when I climbed into my van for the 12 hour ride here, but the joy that I felt on that last tow - that’s another reason I came back this year to the JR Aerotow. As I ferried the trusty ASK back to the pit, I passed a happy but weary Steve Rojecki. With a smile on his face, he informed me that I was the last man down.