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Bahia Gliding 2013 (Return to Paradise)
Branko Stojković, strojni inženir, ki ga nekateri slovenski jadralci poznajo iz Zrenjanina tudi po vzdevku Dugi, je v zadnjem obdobju opozoril nase z 22. mestom na SP 2013 v jadralnem letenju v Argentini, ko je v klubskem razredu zmagal 2. in 5. tekmovalni dan. Drugič pa je izpeljal izvrstni jadralski niz od 15. do 25. septembra 2013 v Bahii v Braziliji, ko je za ogrevanje z nimbusom preletel 807 in 644 km, nadaljeval pa s std. jantarjem (809 km, 767, 589, 723, 599, 672, 661). Stojković živi v Vancouvru (Kan), sicer pa ga privlačijo teoretična razmišljanja o jadralnem letenju. Prvič se je z jadranjem v Južni Ameriki srečal leta 2012, na predsvetovnem prvenstvu v Argentini, tu ga je prijatelj Gugi, član brazilske ekipe, povabil v Bahio (Brazilija), kjer je prvič opravil FAI trikotnik 800 km s povprečno hitrostjo 128 km/h. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9nq0eZQcQ4 (jadranje v Bahii v Brazilija),
Flying in Bahia The resort already has its own airfield, located within the bounds of the “Alcatraz” farm (soon to be renamed to Albatroz, which in Portugese means Albatross) just outside of LEM, off the BR-020 road leading South to the nation’s capital Brasilia, about six hours drive from LEM. You can find it on Google Earth by entering these coordinates: 12°10'12.52"S, 45°48'44.44"W) The current facilities include a 1500 meter long grass runway, an open hangar and a tie-down area that can accommodate at least ten gliders. The current glider fleet includes a Grob 103 Twin II, Blanik L-23, Jantar Standard 2 and a Nimbus 3T. In summer of 2013 Gugui purchased a number of gliders in Europe that will be added to the fleet in 2014. These include another Jantar Standard 2, Jantar 1, Jantar 2B, Standard Cirrus, Open Cirrus, and a PIK 20. He is also looking for a high performance two seater, either a Duo Discus or an ASH-25. This year the towing operation was conducted with a rented Piper Pawnee, which was more than adequate for servicing the current fleet of four gliders, plus a number of Brazilian pilots who came to do some practice flying prior to the 2013 Brazilian Nationals, which were held in early October at the new LEM municipal airport. Starting in 2014 Bahia Gliding should be operating its own tow plane (an already purchased Zlin Z-37T Turbo Čmelák) and a Tost winch, which is at present at the Bahia Gliding airfield waiting to be overhauled before being put back into service. By the way, the location is ideal for winch operation as the thermal conditions around the airfield are excellent and the reliable “house thermals” can be relied on most of the time. As an illustration, the release altitudes on all nine aero tows I took this year were between 200 and 400 meters QFE. During my visit Gugui signed a lease agreement with the owner of the farm, thus setting up the stage for improving the airfield (lengthening the runway, building a taxiway, installing a runway irrigation system to eliminate dust, improving the hangar) and building the resort facilities right at the airfield. Considering the current and future work on the infrastructure, Bahia Gliding resort is making progress in leaps and bounds and it poised to be ready to receive its first official overseas visitors next season.
More about Flying in Bahia For starters, this year I made nine cross country flights compared to five in 2012. During those nine flights I racked up 56:21 hours and 6273 cross country kilometers, for an average of 697 km/flight. All nine flights earned one of the top three spots on the OLC plus worldwide daily score. The soaring weather conditions within the 300 km radius from LEM are usually fairly uniform and reliable. The usual modus operandi for flying long FAI triangles is to initially head West, downwind towards the border between Bahia and Tocantins provinces, located some 65 km West of LEM. The first turn point is usually between 5 and 50 km inside Tocantins, depending on the weather and the planned XC flight distance. For the second leg of the triangle you either turn roughly due North or due South. On most days the sky looks equally good in both directions and you can easily go either way. When flying a 700 to 800 km FAI triangle, the second leg is usually around 250 km long usually with a moderate Easterly crosswind. The third leg, also around 250 km long, is to the Southeast if you took the Northerly route or to the Northeast if you chose the triangle to the South. The fourth and final leg of the triangle goes due West and can be anywhere from 80 to 150 km. The final glide into the setting sun is downwind, which can be helpful if you’re going for the maximum distance. Also helpful are the stubble fires which are a reliable source of very good and not too turbulent thermals even late in the day. Days 1, 2 and 3 and my first outlanding in Bahia I chose a 1.6 kilometer long smooth dirt airstrip next to a large farm. No sooner I got out of the cockpit, a worker from the farm arrived on a motorcycle to check out what had happened and if I was okay. Thanks to my (and his) rudimentary knowledge of Spanish we managed to communicate enough for him to help me move the glider off the runway, after which he gave me a ride on the back of his motorbike to the farm’s main office. There I got introduced to Luis Evandro Gauer, the managing director for this and five other soy and cotton farms in Bahia, all owned by a company called FraNor and totaling some 40,000 hectares. After a phone call to Marcel to report the land-out and the coordinates, Luis took me to one of the farmhouses with a bathroom, a large kitchen, a dining room and a couple of sofas in front of a big screen TV and offered me to stay there while he attended to some of his duties. I crashed on the sofa, relaxing and surfing through Brazilian TV channels. Luis returned after about an hour and offered me a cold beer and a couple of tuna sandwiches, both of which I gladly accepted. After we finished the meal, and after I refused the second beer, Luis took me on an hour long guided tour of the farm showing me the twin cotton processing lines, huge soybean silos and a number of very large and very modern combines, tractors and various other farm equipment. Soon after we finished the tour, Gugui and Bruno arrived in the Bahia Gliding Jeep with the trailer. Twenty minutes later we were on our way back to LEM – a 130 km two hour trip. Gugui and Bruno brought a few sandwiches and a two liter Coke bottle that Gugui’s mother-in-law Araci filled with freshly squeezed orange juice. We made it back to the house around 11 PM, just in time for the third installment of the dinner. At this point I should mention that landing out in Bahia is a fairly safe and straight forward affair. The area is flat with large cultivated fields and with a number of farms with adjacent dirt strips used by crop dusters. There are, however, some less hospitable areas. Most notably, the Tocantins province to the West of Bahia and the Goiás province to the Southwest feature hilly terrain at elevation of 400 to 500 meters QNH, covered in tropical shrubs and dwarf trees. The cultivated fields few in this area are few and far between and the road network is fairly sparse. However, if you stay within 20 to 30 kilometers from the Bahia border, you can always move back closer to Bahia and the landable terrain if you happen to be getting lower. Similar scenery is also typical in the Piauí and Maranhão provinces to the North of Bahia. On the flip side, there are a number of airports and airstrips whose coordinates I had in my Oudie and I would often check (and confirm) that I was within the gliding range of at least one of them. The weather on Day 3 (9/17) improved, with only a few localized areas of cumulus overdevelopment. I flew a 599 km triangle to the North, because the XC Skies forecast was a little better to the North. At one point on the third leg, while climbing in a 3 m/s thermal under one towering cumulus, virga appeared from the opposite side of the cloud, producing a very bright and beautiful rainbow. During this flight the total energy system in the Jantar wasn’t functioning properly, which made things interesting when pulling up from a 180 km/h cruise speed.
Day 4, 5 and 6 Day 5 (9/19) the weather returned to normal, making for an easy 723 km to the North. Day 6 (9/20) turned out to be weaker than expected (1.7 m/s average for the flight), but still good enough for a 589 km (568 FAI triangle) to the South. Days 7 and 8 For Day 8 (9/22) the weather forecast looked great and I decided to go for the maximum distance. This time I chose to fly the Northern triangle, if for no other reason than to change the scenery. By midafternoon, the cloud bases rose to 4100 meters QNH, but the conditions were drier than the day before and with not as many cloud streets as I have grown accustomed to. Mid-way through the second leg I chose to deviate around a large area of brush fires in order to keep the wings clean for the remainder of the flight. The result was an 810 km flight (783 km FAI triangle) at still respectable 117 km/h, worth 1044 points on the OLC+. Days 9, 10 and 11 Day 10 (9/24) was forecast by XC-Skies to be even better than the day before, however the weather didn’t unfold as forecast. During the day a cold front approached LEM from the Southwest and a pre-frontal weather pattern with low visibility and significant overdevelopment affected a large are to the South and West of LEM. Soon after turning South for the second leg the sky got almost totally overcast and I realized that I wasn’t going to break any (personal) records that day. I still managed to cover 644 km and got in a lot of practice flying the long winged Nimbus, which compared to Jantar Standard 2 required a much different piloting technique, especially when banking in and out of turns. The XC-Skies forecast for day 11 (2/25) was again very good, and it being my last flying day in Bahia for this year, I prepared for another attempt at a 1000 km triangle. Since the cold from the day before was stalled some 150 km Southwest of LEM I decided to try going North instead of South. I took off at 10:27, earlier than usual, but initially had trouble finding a good thermal and was back to 200 m QFE when I finally connected with a decent 2.3 m/s. The CU’s started popping early, but as I was approaching the Tocantins border the sky started looking darker and darker with poor visibility and very little sunshine on the ground. I decided to cut short the first leg a few km before reaching the edge of the Bahia plateau and turned Northeast to try to get away from the area affected by the front. However, after about 50 km I reached the edge of a huge blue hole covering the whole Northern half of Bahia. I climbed as high as I could (to 2700 m QNH) below one of the last Cu’s and set off into the blue hole. The air was felt smooth, which was not a good sign. Further ahead I did manage to find a blue thermal, but it was only 0.7 m/s. At that point I decided to finally give up the quest for 1000 km triangle and turned Southeast towards where the weather looked to be the best. It was a good decision and I soon connected with a couple of 100 km long cloud streets, first one going Southeast and the next one due South. The remainder of the flight was effortless and very enjoyable and I ended up covering 808 km. The flight duration was 7:18 and I probably could have stretched it another half hour, which means that a 1000 km triangle is definitely possible on a good day. Total Tally
Začetki jadranja v Bahii v Braziliji leta 2012 Opomba: Pričujoči sestavek je bil prvič objavljen v Canadian Free Flight magazine, vendar brez fotografij, ki jih najdete v galeriji na dnu sestavka How it all began My first ever trip to South America happened in January 2012 in order to take part in the Pre-World’s contest at Adolfo Gonzales Chaves, Argentina, where I represented my country of origin Serbia. I decided to take part in the Pre-World’s in order to learn something about the local conditions and improve my chances for a good result in the subsequent Club Class World’s, which will be held in the same place in January 2013. I could have written a long article about my first trip to Chaves, but since I will be going back there again for the World’s next January, suffice it to say that my first trip there far exceeded all my expectations. At Chaves I made a number of new friends and this story is about one of them. I met Guilherme Purnhagen – Gugui, a member of the Brazilian gliding team, the day I arrived in the Chaves airfield cafeteria. It was immediately obvious that we had something in common, being the two tallest pilots in the contest (me at 6’-4” and Gugui at 6’-5”). By the luck of the draw, we also ended up in the same row on the grid, which gave us time and opportunity to have chat and socialize every flying day before takeoff. After the contest, Gugui and his crew gave me a lift back to Buenos Aires on their way back to Rio de Sul, in a Canadian made school bus! Gugui also invited me to join him and his friends in Bahia province in September, where they go every year for a month of cross-country flying. He said that there were only two types of weather in Bahia in September: good and great. I agreed in principle, subject to being able to find time and money to make the trip. After returning home, we kept in touch by email and by late July I had to make a decision on whether I was going to Bahia or not. Gugui also had to know in order to plan the 2,300 km road trip from Rio do Sul - Santa Catarina to Luis Eduardo Magalhaes – Bahia. If I was coming, he would also bring along the Jantar Standard 2 (the same one he flew in Argentina) in addition to his Nimbus 3T. Not being able to find a good reason why not to go, I purchased the airline tickets on-line to fly from Vancouver to Brasilia and then on to Barreiras – Bahia on a local Gol airline. So, the trip was on and I was looking forward to a new adventure in South America. Flying and socializing The whole group, including Gugui’s family and friends, stayed in a small 3 bedroom apartment located in a corner of Tomé’s hangar and they made room for me in one of the rooms. Tomé, who owns a local crop dusting operation with two Piper Pawnees and three Cessna AgWagons was our host and, with September being an off-season for crop dusting, also our tow pilot with one of the Pawnees. While the accommodations weren’t very fancy, the breakfasts and suppers made by Gugui’s mother-in-law Araci were fantastic. One day we went to a local farm and picked 80 fresh coconuts for some freshly extracted coconut juice. Several times Tomé invited the whole group to a nice little resort with a swimming pool on the banks of the local stream, for good meal and a swim. Had the flying been unremarkable, the wonderful hospitality of my hosts and the good times we spent together would have made the trip worth wile. However, during the week that I spent in Bahia I enjoyed some of the best weather and made some of the best and most memorable flights of my gliding career. The first one, which turned out to be the shortest at 457 km, was still good enough for the 7th place on the OLC Worldwide Daily Score. That was followed by a 660 km flight in the Jantar Std. 2, 684 km and 817 km (805 km FAI triangle) flights in the Nimbus 3T/24.5 and another 574 km (537 km FAI triangle) in the Jantar. These four flights ended up 1st, 2nd, 1st and 1st on the OLC Worldwide Daily Score tables!
Local conditions for gliding Due to its unique geographic location, Bahia offers the best weather conditions in the World for long cross country flights in the period between mid-August and mid-October. During this peak season, the cloud bases are typically between 10,000 to 14,000 feet ASL, which is the kind of weather I experienced. Some years there are more blue days, but on those the thermals tops can be even higher, up to 16,000 feet ASL. The thermals typically produce between 5 and 8 knots lift, but it is not unusual to find 10 knots or more. My best one was a 14 knot boomer! Because of the closeness to the Equator (LEM’s latitude is 12° South), the wind in the convective layer is almost always from the East, with the strength anywhere from 5 to 25 knots. The average maximum daily temperature in September is around 34 °C, while the relative humidity is usually between 10 and 30%, making the heat quite bearable. The rest of the year is also flyable; however, during the rainy season which lasts from mid-October until April, the cloud bases are lower and isolated CB’s develop every afternoon. On the flip side, the lift is generally stronger than during the dry season and the thermals are spaced closer together, allowing for some very fast and fun flying. During the peak mid-August to mid-October season the days with non-soarable weather are extremely rare, although I did experience one day with overcast skies that didn’t clear until late in the afternoon. Both the terrain and the weather are quite uniform within at least a 300 km radius from LEM, allowing for long flights and large FAI triangles. There is no altitude limit and there is only one small area of controlled airspace around Barreiras, some 90 km East of LEM. I spent most of the time en route out of radio range, but I had my Spot tracking turned on and it worked without a hitch. Weather wise, there are only two minor downsides. One is the smoke from brush fires, which can in some places reduce the visibility to only a few of kilometers. However, the smoke is not all bad news, since the brush fires also provide a reliable source of lift, especially towards the end of the day. On my last day I used a very strong thermal generated by a big wildfire to climb from 1,200 feet AGL (the lowest I’d been the whole week) to some 8,000 feet, enough for the final glide with the McCready set at 6 knots. The other downside is that the days are shorter than in summer at higher latitudes. The sun sets at 6 PM sharp and by 6:15 it is totally dark. All of my cross country flights lasted between 5 ½ to 6 ½ hours and I made my final glides into the setting sun, landing between 5:10 and 5:40 PM. Given that on most days I could have taken off between half an hour to an hour earlier, the maximum flight time one can count on is around 7 hours. So, in order to complete a 1,000 km FAI triangle, one must use up every bit of the flyable weather and average no less than 140 km/h. This can probably be done several times per season in a high performance glider. For example, the day I did my 800 km FAI triangle I could have taken off about 45 minutes earlier. Also, my average speed of 128 km/h could have been better had I had the full water ballast on board and had I been more familiar with the glider (this was only my second flight in a Nimbus 3 and the first one with ballast). On the plus side, 300, 500 and even 750 km FAI triangles can be flown on many days and completing them doesn’t require the latest and greatest equipment.
Plans for the future I got an invitation to come back to Bahia for 2 to 3 weeks every September, which I will find very difficult to resist. Gugui also told me about his plans to establish a gliding centre somewhere near LEM, with a private runway and resort like accommodations for pilots and their families. One of the reasons for moving away from the local airport is the expected increase in the general aviation and commercial traffic, which would not mix well with foreign glider pilots who don’t speak Portuguese. Gugui is also planning to acquire a Wilga tow plane and several high performance single and double seaters, which he would offer for rent to visiting pilots. If everything goes as planned, this should all be in place by September 2014. Currently very few glider pilots outside Brazil know about Bahia and its potential. However, judging by the comments made by most of my gliding friends, there seem to be a lot of potential interest in visiting Bahia to do some quality cross-country soaring in the future.
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Bahia Gliding 2013 (Return to Paradise) - An Update on the Bahia Gliding Resort Milan Petković Petko v Livnem = 80 ur v 14 dneh Milan Petković Petko in Livno = 80 hours in 14 days
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