You have probably seen a number of my reports of soaring
adventures when I am on business trips around the world.
Well here is my report of soaring in Kenya. The purpose
of my trip was to present a series of lectures about
our RAMS weather modeling sys tem at a World Meteorological
Organization sponsored short course or workshop in Nairobi,
Kenya. Before coming to Kenya I had the opportunity
to have an e-mail discussion with Tim McCallister who
spent his honeymoon in Kenya at a gliderport operated
by Pe ter and Petra All My wife said a honeymoon at
a gliderport?? She was amazed! But "Tim" claims
they had a great time and they found Peter and Petra
great people to interact with. So, I had to give it
a try.
I first attended a three-day meeting at NASA Goddard
and then boarded a Sabena Airlines flight to Brussels
and then connecting to Nairobi, leaving at 6:00PM on
3 December 1999. The flight was in a nearly new Airbus.
It is a fine plane, but at least the way Sabena had
it set up in coach, the seats were narrower and had
less legroom than any major U.S. carrier that I have
flown with. It had this fancy entertainment center with
your personal LCD display and a control stick that was
located at your hip in the seat unless you removed it
with its attached cord. The problem was that on this
control stick was the call button for attendants and
with the narrow seats and people with wide bottoms,
the call buttons were continually going off all the
way over and a ll the way back!
In spite of the fact it was raining cats and dogs in
the morning after my mid-night arrival at the hotel,
I called Yellow Wings Air services to see if it made
sense at all about considering flying up to Mweiga where
the glider operation that Tim recomm ended is located.
They said they would call Peter and Petra Allmendinger,
owners and operators of the commercial soaring club.
About an hour later, 9:45AM, I got a call back that
it was reasonably clear up there and it was expected
to clear even in Nairo bi. So I grabbed a taxi and headed
to Wilson field where I met the pilot, Stefan, and we
cranked up an old Cessna 172. After climbing up to 8500',
Stefan let me take the controls and I flew the remainder
of the 45-minute flight. Except for a mountain pass
area, the whole landscape was covered by one small farm
after another. I climbed up to 9500' over the pass and
then let down dodging cumulus clouds. Stefan assured
me that it would clear up near Mweiga as it generally
does. However, as we got closer, I c ould detect a loss
of confidence in his optimism. A mid-level stratus deck
covered the entire area.
I gather it had been raining rather regularly for about
a month, as the grass was quite green all over the area.
We landed to in a 15kt cross wind. Two gliders were
set up on the north end of the runway next to a grass-roofed
ramada. Both planes were t wins, one a K-13 and the
other an open cockpit Slingsby T-21. The T-21 is about
a 40 year old plane that looks like a dragonfly when
viewed from the front. The wing is elevated above the
fuselage on a pod of sorts. The windscreen is two oval
plastic winds hields that resemble some British sports
car windscreens of the same era. I had always thought
that would be an interesting ship to fly and it appeared
I might get the chance.
As I tumbled out of the Cessna, I was welcomed by Peter
and Petra, and a few other members of the commercial
gliding club. They are a very friendly couple and both
are Germans. They had the winch setup for a southerly
takeoff, but, wouldn't you know, the winds shifted and
they had to switch the whole operation end-for-end.
This involved moving the winch and cable doe-see-doe,
hooking both gliders at once on an old Mini-Moke and
dragging them to the other end. We hardly moved 10'
when the Moke ran out of gas. So a beat up VW bug was
brought down which couldn't move very slow so it was
a jog to the other end of the runway.
Peter then took a couple, one at a time, on scenic
flights in the T-21. Peter later said that the T-21
is very popular for scenics, especially on nice warm
days. Maybe CSA should think about acquiring one? Then
it was my turn. As the previous flights w ere only 15
minutes or so, I didn't expect much of a flight, but
flying the T-21 would be an experience anyway. With
Peter following through with me, we got a good winch
flick to 1100'. Peter suggested I turn into the weak
thermal we encountered just befo re release. Now the
T-21 is a very different bird to fly compared to anything
I have flown previously. Turns on the roll-axis are
so stiff I felt I needed two hands on the stick! Moreover,
once you get it to bank into a turn sharply it feels
like it is go ing to roll over on its back into a spin!
It took me a while to get the hang of the beast. If
you didn't kick in appropriate rudder, down that wing
would drop and I'd be looking straight at the ground
through its open sides! Moreover, I didn't need to loo
k at the yaw string when I slipped and skidded as I
would get a blast of fresh air in my face-wham! This
is like flying the old open-cockpit biplanes.
But we scratched away in those little thermals and
eventually gained some altitude. Then Peter said it
looks like "the" shear-line or convergence
line was coming through for the first time this year.
At the leading edge of the line of cumuli, clouds we
re thin and wispy and behind it normal towering cumuli
grew to 8000 or 9000'. The best lift, however, was not
beneath the bigger cu but instead beneath the wispy
cu. In fact we encountered strong enough lift to launch
us several thousand feet above the to wering cumuli,
reaching 11,000'. Remember this is an open cockpit plane,
so we were freezing our butts up there. I would work
back and forth along the leading edge of the convergence
line above the wispy cu much like working a wave. This
line behaved simi lar to a "bore-like" wave
much like the famous Australian Morning Glory. I looked
at aircraft charts trying to understand what triggered
this bore. Behind the bore front the airmass was definitely
different than in front as it was moister, hazier, and
eve n smelled different. But the coast is some 600km
away and the terrain slopes gently up to the ridges
near Mount Kenya, so it doesn't appear to be a bore
triggered on a sea-breeze front interacting with steep
topography. It was moving between Mount Kenya t o the
east and another mountain range to the west whose name
I forget. After a while, the cu behind the leading wispy
line began looking ragged and I found weaker lift. It
appeared the bore- front grew shallower and ran ahead
of the cu line, then after a few minutes, it appeared
to retrench back to the cu. After almost an hour the
lift got weaker and we began descending to the airport
and getting a chance to warm up. When flying the T-21
one has to keep a sharp eye out so that you don't drift
very far dow nwind. This plane thermals at about 32kts
and 45kts is probably its best L/D. Faster than that
it drops like a rock. My comment about my Grob G-109B
penetrating like a D-9 Caterpillar is very appropriate
for the T-21 as well!
I pretty much landed it on my own slipping it with
the wind on my face. Flying the T-21 was certainly a
fun experience, especially having that bore-like convergence
line to keep us aloft for over an hour. I felt I needed
a derrick to get me out of the plane once on the ground,
as my butt was sore and muscles in one leg had knotted
up. I wouldn't call the T-21 the most comfortable ship
to fly in.
Now I'll have to go home and run RAMS to figure out
what kicks off that bore, or get Joseph Mukabana at
the University of Nairobi to run it over the area with
sufficiently high resolution.
Stefan and I got back into the Cessna and then over-flew
Peter and Petra's guest-house/ home about 3 miles from
the airport. The house is a double-peaked large southern-
German looking house in an open plain with a nice view
of Mount Kenya. I'd like to bring Vollie back there
sometime to stay a week or so, hiking Mount Kenya and
, me of course, soaring. I understand that elephants
and other wild things can often be seen from their veranda.
They have seen leopard prints in the yard but never
seen one. I n fact, about 10 miles from there on the
way back I spied some elephants lounging in a muddy-looking
pond near a home.
We returned to Nairobi, skirting showers from a large
cumulonimbi, just before dark. I then took a taxi back
to the hotel where I had a nice fish dinner by myself.
For the next week it rained daily in Nairobi and was
overcast most of the time. So, I gu ess I was darn lucky
catching such strong lift and experiencing that shear-line
for the first time this year.
If you are ever in Kenya, be sure to stop in and try
the soaring in Mwiega.
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