http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/para/flightinfo.html?flightId=-1641041659

Friday was the day. A day to go far. A day to get high. A day to run into aircraft.

Every morning I open up my local weather page, in this case, http://ozreport.com/wisweather.php, and check out the local NWS weather forecast for the day (and week), and Dr. Jack\\'s RUC forecast (register and subscribe). I also look at the big picture (Surface Analysis) and the Tskew chart. I want to know the lift, wind direction, surface temperature, the top of the lift and cloud base, and whether there are any big weather feature that will affect the day. All these forecasts are available on my weather pages.

On Friday the soundings showed both that I would have cu's and a north northwest wind. The RUC forecast concurred on the cu's but showed the winds being a bit more westerly. Wind direction is a big issue. West northwest winds push you into Detroit airspace thirty miles away and north northwesterly winds send you to Toledo sixty miles away. So the concern was how westerly would the winds actually be.

I had already setup in my rented Wills Wing Sport 2 - 155 (I traded use of the glider for Wills Wing ads in the Oz Report). My goal was to fly it further than the current Sport 2 record of 109 miles and to beat my site record (set on an ATOS) of 155+ miles. I was just waiting for the cu's to appear.

The Tskew forecast didn't show the inversion that was evident from the lack of cu's as the morning progressed into afternoon. Finally around one they started showing up. Scraggly clouds at first. I only had one hundred and sixty miles to fly, so I wanted to wait until they looked good before taking off.

I was in the air a little after two working 70 fpm to 1,800' AGL. There were scraggly clouds upwind one mile just north of the field that looked possible as a source for better lift (and left me the chance of staying near Cloud 9 in case I needed another tow), but a good looking cloud two miles downwind was more attractive. I turned and headed downwind.

Down to 900' AGL and regretting my impulsive and risky decision I found lift over trees that averaged 250 fpm to 3,400' AGL. Once again saved from bad judgment by a good nose for the source of lift. The sky was full of nice looking cu's all around. I headed south.

Eight miles out, west of the sailplane port on the east side of Gregory, I was climbing at 250 fpm at 5,000' MSL when I heard a noise and then saw a commercial jet with two engines on the back of the fuselage passing 300' over me (between me and the cloud I was circling under) climbing out of Detroit or Ann Arbor. This was the closest a commercial jet had come to me except when one was headed straight for me east of Laredo a few years ago and had to divert.

A few days previously a multi-engine general aviation airplane had flown 100' directly over my head climbing in the same general area. In both cases I was thermaling and I doubt that the pilot of either plane ever saw me.

I continued on concerned about my general south southeasterly drift as I needed to be able to get around the Toledo airspace, but more concerned about staying up first. Belinda was below me traveling highway 53. Twenty five miles out, six miles outside and southwest of the Ann Arbor airspace, another jet just like the last one came by, this time 300' under me on descent. Again, I had been thermaling for a good while and was at about 5,000'. No doubt the pilot didn't ever see me. No incident report: http://www.faa.gov/data_statistics/accident_incident/preliminary_data/. But then there really wasn't an incident, now was there?

Thirty miles out I finally fully realized that my track was taking me straight toward Toledo airspace and that I needed to head west southwest to get around it. I had had previous experience working hard to stay out of this airspace, and maybe the difficulty of those experiences lead me to make a crucial mistake.

I had marked the airspace as C class by putting "C" at the end of the airspace name on my Flytec 5030, which handles long waypoint names. But I had to make the mental translation from C to eleven mile airspace radius around the Toledo waypoint (something you would think would be easy to do). But for some reason I thought it was twenty two miles instead, the radius for B class airspace. I was still 39 miles out from the center of the Toledo airport, so I figured I could head south southwest and keep out of the airspace. This meant I would be flying almost perpendicular to the wind, but there were lots of cu's, so it was possible.

I made it back west of highway 52, which if I had my wits about me I would have known marked the west side of the Toledo airspace and all I had to do was get back up and head south. But with the distance confusion on my mind and my strong desire to stay out of airspace, I climbed out and headed further southwest. Now I had it in mind that if I was just straight south of Cloud 9 I would get around the airspace and I was indeed straight south as I climbed up on the west side of Adrian. Two mental pictures in conflict with no resolution, just confusion.

Finally, at about sixty miles out from Cloud 9 and at twenty five miles west northwest of Toledo, it caught up with me when I didn't take weak lift, that was drifting back toward Toledo, up to anywhere near cloud base. Leaving this thermal too early I headed off westerly to clouds that didn't work. Another factor keeping me from thinking clearly about this thermal was the fact that I'd been in strong lift for the last few thermals so I was emotionally primed to dislike the weak stuff.

I have been working hard on thinking and making deliberate decisions while in flight and for the most part I have been very happy with the results of that concentrated thinking policy. But throw in cognitive confusion and the thinking process degrades.

I landed the at 5 PM in a soy beam field . The cu's lasted until after 8 PM. They mocked me all the way home.

The Sport 2 did a much better job than the pilot. It is also so easy to land that it is a crime. It is easy to thermal and climbs well at low speeds. I certainly don't have any real concern about tucking or tumbling.

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