Dick Johnson returned to Columbus recently for Alice to attend a class reunion at Mississippi University for Women. And since it is so close to Mississippi State University, where he studied under August Raspet, he agreed to drive to Starkville and show Tom Hardy (Columbus, WWII Corsiar pilot) how to soar in weak thermals. Hearing about this Gathering of Geezers, a significant portion of the soaring pilots in Mississippi, Brad Kueven (Meridian, SSA Governor for MS) and I (Oxford), converged on Starkville to take part in the activities.
Tom wanted to fly with Dick in MSU's 2-32, the one once owned by Joe Lincoln that has extended wings and manages a 40:1 L/D. But the insurance would not allow it, so Tom self-launched his DG-400 in Columbus and joined us at Starkville. George Bennett, recently retired from MSU's Raspet Flight Research Laboratory, flew with Dick instead.
I arrived early and nearly had my Standard Cirrus assembled when Brad arrived with his SZD-51-1 Junior in tow. We met a number of the RFRL staff, including Dave Lawrence who flew the tow plane, a beautiful and powerful Stearman. As it turned out, the Stearman needed to fly anyway and it was convenient to haul up three gliders in the process. What a blast.
Already by 11:00 great looking cu's were everywhere. So it really hurt to wait until after 1:00 for the launch. By 2:00, when everyone was aloft, cloud base was 5,000' msl and the lift averaged 2 to 5 kts. Everybody flew the same route, from Starkville to Columbus, skirting the south side of the Columbus AFB airspace. I suspect we appeared on radar, though I've been told otherwise, since a T-38 Talon zipped by about a mile off at my altitude, exactly following the circular boundary of the airspace. I took this as a warning to keep out. This is one time that my moving map display with special-use-airspace came in handy.
I think Dick stayed high all the way to Columbus, but Tom, Brad and I got down to around 3,000'. We all got high again coming back to Starkville.
Dick landed after about 2 hours since George had a 5pm appointment. Tom returned home having learned all he could. That made four trips between Columbus and Starkville for Tom, about 100 miles.
Brad and I continued to fly as cloud bases rose to 7000'. I decided to go 19 nm SW to Louisville, but found mostly blue sky and I chickened out 5 miles short when my L-NAV said I was 700' above glide slope to Starkville. Arriving low back at Starkville I saw Brad near cloud base and, catching a good one, came up to join him. We played with clouds for awhile and I snapped some pictures of him. My highest altitude was 6700' msl (field elevation 338'). Finally, we decided to give it up, so we would have time to trailer our ships and get home by a reasonable hour. We landed about 6pm and found every body gone. By 7:10pm we were too. I learned later that Dick was standing around waiting to help us, but we landed long, near a tie-down area, intending to help each other, so Dick left rather than trudge half way down the runway to offer help that wasn't needed.
I should note that I was impressed with Brad's Junior as a club ship. It has a fixed gear and is as strong as an ox. Brad tells of an incident when a wing tip caught high weeds, sending the other wing up in a high arc. The whole thing come flopping down, nose first, on the main gear, finally dropping the tail on the ground. This would have broken most any other ship, but this one was given a clean bill of health with no repairs needed. It still looks brand new. I've never seen a glider assemble and disassemble faster or easier. It thermals well, but loses L/D rapidly at high speeds.
That was our day at Starkville.
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