205. Chasing the Monster - Gordon Boettger

Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. I have an outrageous story for you today and a conversation with Gordon Boettger. If you don't know his name, you will. He broke the record recently in a sailplane going farther than anybody ever has, although you'll hear why it wasn't a world record, the way they count things with declared distances and points and that kind of thing. You'll hear about all that in the show, but I was sent an article sometime in late June about a gentleman who had flown for 17 hours, flew all night with night vision goggles in wave, chasing the big monster in a sailplane with a co-pilot up and down the Sierras, and I thought and read the article and went, oh my God, I've got to get this guy on the show.

So this is it. We've been trying to get together for the last couple months, finally did. Had an outrageous talk and a lot of fun with this. Gordon is a commercial pilot for FedEx, flies all over the world. He is awesome to follow on Instagram, you know, so check him out. It's gr boe TTG er poker; he's been flying his whole life, came out of the Navy's been flying sailplanes since he was a kid, and these days just almost exclusively chases wave chases the monster in the Sierras, so we we eventually, we talk about a lot of flying and his history and photography and a bunch of the stuff that he's really passionate about, but eventually we get to his amazing flight.

Stays up in the air, like I said, 17 hours, flies all night, does it with night vision goggles, has a very, very special sailplane. There's only four of these in the world that was really built for exactly this kind of mission. So he's way into it. He is wild. We had an outrageous time talking about this. I think I've just said that now three times, but it's the only way to describe it. And one correction is, he mentions a few times IGC; of course, we all know what an IGC file is, but what he was—what he meant in that capacity was—was the FAI. So he's talking about how to spit records and governing body, but that's all pretty obvious. We were just—we were both having a little cocktail when we were recording this, and we were so excited, neither one of us caught it.

So enjoy this, I'm not going to say it again, but crazy conversation with an exceptional pilot, Gordon Boettger. Cheers.

Gordon, we've been chatting here for a bit, but welcome to the mayhem. And I'm really excited to talk about this insane flight you did. This came, I don't remember how this came over my, flew over my desk one day in the last couple months. months. I know this was June 19th when you did it, but I read this, the article and went, my God, I got to talk to this guy. And so we will get there, but let's just tease our listeners here a little bit and get into, I'd love to hear more about your history. I know you fly big jets for FedEx. You've been doing that for a long time. You mentioned you were in the Navy to begin with, But how did you get to this point where you can fly these sailplanes so well? And take your time, but let's get us up to speed.

Well, it all kind of started as a kid. My dad, he and my mother immigrated from Germany back in the late mid-60s. He was in the German Air Force out there. So he was always – I got a very family-oriented or aviation-oriented family. So my father got me into it. But he used to throw me in the backseat of these gliders down in the Mojave Desert when I was a kid. And I kind of took to it. And my mom worked for Flying Tigers at the time. And I used to be able to do some non-rev flights sometimes in the cockpit. And I always thought this is a pretty cool lifestyle. These guys are living all, you know, flying all over the world and just having a good time, making decent money, a lot of time off. And I go, I think this is something I might want to do. So, you know, my dad introduced me to soaring at the age of 13.

And I took to that down in Southern California. There was actually a place down in Los Alamitos at the military base that had a soaring program. So I got involved with that at age 13 and then sold it on my 14th birthday. Was your dad military? Yeah, he was in the German Air Force out there. And then he came out here and got a job with McDonnell Douglas as an engineer with Douglas. But he was a flight instructor. Yeah, I grew up doing a lot of surfing. So that was kind of my life. And uh, I knew I had to, you know, eventually, you know, do something that's, uh, that was going to be a little more serious, but that the glider stuff, I just got, I just got hooked on. And, uh, you know, just like in the paragliding world, you just, you know, you kind of, you know, what's, what's next? And, uh, so I soloed on my 14th birthday and then started getting into this cross-country stuff.

And, and, uh, you know, Schweitzer 126 glider, which is kind of a low-performance, you know, probably that 24 to 1 glide ratio type glider, but I started getting into that cross-country thing as a kid. And then I started going out to the desert every single weekend, and that was my life, you know, every weekend to go out to the desert, sleep with my buddies back, you know, the back of this Toyota pickup truck, and we just fly gliders all weekend long and then drive back and get back to school Monday morning. So that was my life. And then, uh, that helped me actually get into the military. In the flying background, I started with power at age 15 and solo on my 16th birthday with, with the power, power planes, but the, the engine stuff didn't, didn't intrigue me because it was, it was, you know, after flying gliders, it's pretty boring, you know, having a motor hanging out there.

So, so I kind of stuck with the glider stuff and really started stretching my distances and going after these, these soaring badges, you know, that Soaring Society of America has and started acquiring all those, and then, and then I joined the military. Uh, so I joined the Navy, went off to Pensacola, flight training, two years of flight training, and then spent six years active duty flying off of two different aircraft carriers, and did my time and punched out of there, and then got a job with FedEx at age, uh, 28, and then, uh, I've been doing

That, what were you, what were you flying off the carriers? What were, what was your E-2 Hawkeyes? Okay.

that's carry uh basically a carrier exterior based AWACS to Rookrop airplane. So yeah, I did my time there. And then, you know, did you enjoy it? You know, the flying part of the flying stuff on off the boat was really challenging. That part was fun, but I just didn't, I didn't enjoy life sitting on a, you know, sitting on a big gray thing with 5,000 dudes, you know, for six months that, that got old. But, you know, I mean, It was a stepping stone to get the airlines, because they needed that flight time, and I didn't have the money to to pay for that myself in the civilian world. So I had to. It's a great way to get hours, use the military, you know? It's, yeah, you serve your country, and you know that, you know all that kind of jazz. But that was good, that was all good, and got my experience.

I'm glad I did it, you know? It, uh, you grow up pretty quickly doing it. And, um, you know, it's funny looking back now. You see these kids that are that were my age, you know, 22 years old, flying off these boats, you're going, "Oh my god, these kids are letting these kids fly these airplanes off off of carriers." You know, so I'm kind of kind of aging myself. I'm like the old man now, but, uh, You know, it's not

All Top Gun, it's not that exciting.

That's right, yeah. I'm not—I'm not the Tom Cruise looking guy, that's for sure. But you know, it's funny, during the Navy, uh, during my time in the Navy, I was still always, you know, I still wanted to really get into the sailplane stuff, the distant stuff. And obviously, you know, with the family and all that, I just didn't have the time to do everything I wanted to do. So the glider stuff was kind of put on hold. And then it, uh, we've been up here in the minute area for 21 or about, just about 21 years now. So, so once we got that, was that

Immediately post-Navy, it was, yeah, it was about two years.

After two years, after I got out of the Navy, I bailed out of San Diego. I was living down San Diego and, um, you know, I was flying down in Water Springs, down in the, you know, hills east of San Diego and, you know, the soaring's okay, but you can't really get out and do the big stuff like you can here. You know, it's not the big stuff, but, uh, once I moved up here, then I started getting really serious about doing, doing big wave flights and that's what, you know, I knew I was always limited distance-wise with thermal flights because we're relying on the heating and, um, with mountain wave, it's just a whole different, whole different an animal, you know, and, uh, it's super good here, both thermals and wave I

mean, was that was the wave flying? And I mean, because this is something really beyond the stretch that, you know, hang gliders can touch it, but the really, uh, you know, I—we have, I flew in wave in the Alps during the 2015 X-Alps, and you know, it's pretty rowdy for us. You know, that's—that's just—that's a lot of—that's a lot of wind. But was this something that was early on? Was it on your radar from the 14, or was this something—yeah, it was. I mean, you know, you guys just, in your world, this is what you guys do.

Yeah, I mean, Wave is, uh, overall, Wave is very, uh, it's, it's not popular with most. I would say probably 90% of the this sailplane pilots because they don't want to deal with the elements. They don't want to deal with the winds, they don't want to deal with the cold, the icing, the freezing, freezing, and just the turbulence and all the other crazy stuff that goes along with it. I mean, there's a price to pay for these, these distances. You got to be willing to, to deal with that kind of, uh, you know, to deal with those risks. And I mean, yeah, the risks, the risks are, are there, and then everything's kind of heightened and you got to be on your a-game. But I think it can be safely done. But backing up to when it, when it all started, I started flying Wave at probably age 15 and 16. I, I mean, when I was 16, I was like, I was, I think, 16 or 17.

I went up in the Owens Valley. I was up, you know, above the loon pine at 34,000 feet, you know, 16-year-old kid.

Wow. No way.

Yeah. Wow. It's pretty wild. These are a lot of

pressure, right? Talk about the, I mean, we got a long way to come up to where you are now, but even back then, what equipment, when you're 16 flying at 34 grand, what do you, what equipment are you using?

Are you

just on bottled oxygen? Yeah, you're just bottled. You're paragliding? Okay. Yeah.

I mean, nowadays we have the EDS regulators, but back then you either had a constant flow system or you had a pressure demand regulator, you know, the old military type A14 regulator. And at the time I had an A14 regulator and, you know, those drain you of O2 as well as, you know, the constant flow system. So back then, you know, I'm flying with an A14 regulator, you know, you're not pressurized or heated. didn't, and uh, you know, they had a, um, back in the 50s, they did a big sierra wave project and, um, with, uh, you know, that was kind of a government-sponsored type project that they did for a several

years per land type of thing, yeah.

And so they learned a lot, because that was all done at Bishop. So, uh, they learned a lot about rotor turbulence, you know, and all this other wacky stuff that goes on with wave. And, you know, they end up writing books about it. And so wave has been and, you know, it's been something, an area that people have touched, I think, but not really seriously gotten into because, like I said, a lot of people don't like dealing with it. I mean, I'll go to the Minden Airport and you'll see 30 gliders tied out in the summertime, in the wintertime, nothing, you know. They're like, we're done. Gliders are in the box, see you in spring. And, you know, I'm like, hey, if the air is going up vertically, use it, you know, as long as you can safely do it and, you know, take advantage of it. It and that's, that's I've always been intrigued with the wave because I think all the records from here on out are going to be done, are going to be done in a way, sure.

They have to be, because you just can't, you can't do that. And with the length of day, you, the limited length of day you have in thermals, as you guys know, so when

You were 16, flying at 34 grand. Are you, are you flying in triple, uh, sleeping bag? How are you staying warm? It's not... No, I just cockpit and all that. Well, back

Back then we had the moon boots, you know, moon boots and you're just, you're freezing your ass off, you know, and I mean, at that age, you don't, you know, you're not doing the research to find out what the proper gear is. You're, you're, you're learning the hard way, you know, you're coming back and your fingers and feet are about to fall off and yeah, you go, why am I doing this? But you know, when the canopy is icing up and guys said, Oh, you got to use alcohol and spray it on the canopy. And so I'm shooting the canopy and the whole thing's icing up and that didn't do anything. thing, and people say, you know, so it's... there's a lot of goofy stuff, but yeah, it was pretty spooky that one day. And that was actually the day after my friend Bob Harris broke the world altitude record. Uh, he got up to 49,009 feet unpressurized. So, oh, that's... that was

unpressurized yeah that

was baldy to me. That's, that's like, that's like Chuck Yeager type stuff. That's old, you know, that's old school. Um, he just did it, kind of standard, standard glider and and one up there and and unpressurized. And a friend of mine that I grew up with, the guy used to go flying with, he was a, you know, he was like 19 or 20 at the time. He got up to a little over 40,000 feet and he got bent that that day. And so he was in the Marine Corps and following day he ends up, you know, we we crashed out in the back of his Toyota truck and so we celebrated because Bob Harris got the world out to record my buddy Howard Foot. He got, uh, he got a little over 40,000 feet. So we wake up in the morning, we're sleeping, sleeping bags in the back of his truck and he goes, "Yeah, I feel like shit." I go, "What's going on?" He goes, "I don't know." And I go, "Dude, the waves work, we got to fly." He goes, "I can't." He goes, "I got to drive back down to El Toro where he was stationed." He drives down El Toro and barely makes it down there and he checks in the medical room like, "What?

What were you doing?" Oh, I, you know, flew up to 40,000 feet and go. So they, they put him in chamber down in San Diego and he got big time. So was that, he got, would that have

been hape no

he got

or he got a

He got an aerial embolism, so he got, you know, the nitrogen, you know, the bubbles in the bloodstream. So, so yeah, so he got, yeah, he got diving in reverse. This is a whole nother story, but at the time, this could be a whole nother podcast type thing, but at the time he was trying to get into the Marine Corps to fly. He was, is an enlisted guy. He knew the general of the base, General Bloomer, General Bloomer was going to help him get in the flight program. Well, about six months after he got bent, he submits his paperwork to get in the flight program. He's got to do this medical thing, eval, and they go, you can't fly. You've had the bends. So he goes back to General Bloomer, says, hey, General, you got to fix this. You're a general, by the way, you know? And the general says, hey, I can't do anything about this what does he do about a year later he steals an a4 jet out of el toro

It flies it out over freaking southern California, yep. And, uh, what? Yeah, lands it back in El Toro and gets, you know, military. He took it. Was a Fourth of July weekend; he took off at midnight, dark runway, and he was—he just jumped in a, in a jet, and it was an OA4. It had an internal APU and then started it up and then blast it off and then came back and he got thrown in the brig and, you know, it ended up in the papers. So there is some Top Gun shit going on. Oh, yeah, that is awesome. Yeah, so anyway, buddy, yeah, you got remembered for that. But, yeah, so fast forward, you know, uh, you know, when I moved up to men and I just got, you know, I go, "Hey, I gotta, I gotta get into this whole wave thing," and and at the time, I was flying an old 1971 Kestrel, which is probably a 42 to 1 glide ratio, an old wing.

But still, it could do something. And anyway, I had big bottles in that and started doing some big flights in that. And I finally did a 2,000-kilometer, several 2,000-kilometer flights in that. So that got quite a bit of publicity. You went 2,000K thermally, not wind. No, no, that was, that was in wave in the, in the casserole. Yeah. So, you know, I'd say, yeah. How many

laps, how many times up and down is that?

Well, that was a three turn point. So I got a few records out of that. So that was a, a three turn point distance record. And I don't, I'm not quite sure how you guys have your record categorized, but we can have a three turn point distance record where we have, we can pre-declare three turn points. Yeah, and they have to be at least 10 kilometers apart, so we can go up and down what we call yo-yo up and down the Owens Valley. And we have straight out distance records, so I have one. I almost made it to Rapid City, South Dakota, on on a downwind flight way. So, how far is that? Uh, that was, uh

That was probably seven, uh, roughly 800 statuette, maybe, you know, so

You're so you, and that was, was a declared goal kind of flight, um, I

declared it, but I didn't reach the goal. The goal was Rapid City. I landed, um, I landed just outside of Devil's Tower there. The, uh, at that airport, amazing. So, but what, what's happening with all these flights is, you know, I'm going above 18,000 feet. I'm going up in the class A airspace, so I have a, um, some letter agreements established with, uh, with Oakland, Salt Lake, Denver Center, and, uh, Seattle Center to go up high. So what I do is that something you

Could just declare on the day. Do you, you let them know the day of or day before they?

want you to, they want you to call the the day before you call the control center supervisor, say, "I'm I'm that idiot with the glider that's gonna try to go up high and getting everyone's weight and uh go down." Are you

Flying with Flarm. What are you flying with? Yeah, I do have

flarm, but I've got I'm ADS-B out and in with, uh, with transponder, you know, but glider, glider, it's all, you know, the flarm stuff is really effective. So, so yeah, um, so I started getting into this, uh, the wave stuff here and things started kind of getting bigger and bigger and then I got a Duo Discus glider, which is a non-flapped camp earth glider, probably, you know, I don't know, 44 to 1 glide ratio, very low wing loading, you know, and and kind of limited. I, I would say it's a, it's a very good cross country trainer, but I started banging out some big records in that, you know, and then got several flights over 2,000 kilometers in that and then, um, I realized, okay, I'm kind of tapped out with this thing, I can't go any further.

It was equipped with lights, I was able, I was able to legally fly at night, which is, which is okay, but to do like an overnight flight; it's like, it's a whole different animal, you know? And then

talk talk about real real quickly just for for those who you know paragliders of Of course, we understand the concept of wave, but I don't know how much wind you need to create wave and what are you looking for in the forecast when you're doing these 2,000 Ks? And how many years ago was that? Was that a

decade? For the what? When you're

starting doing the Kestrel? Yeah,

that was probably 20 years ago. I mean, I started getting some big flights. What

do you need for that to set up and what is it like launching in that kind of lee? and what so

So, what we're basically looking for is, we're basically looking for, you know, the key months for, for, for wave. I mean, obviously all winter long, because any anytime you have a low pressure system that pumps through. So, I'm looking at kind of the 500 millibar charts, which is kind of at the 18,000 foot levels, kind of see where the jet, jet streams line up with the jet axis and see what kind of flow that, that system that's bringing us. And, and it's for this year, it's all going to be prefrontal type waves, so we're looking at a southwesterly type flow. And so, when that flow, when that jet stream starts kind of dipping south, that's when, you know, that's when it's like, okay, you know, it starts like, it's like the buoy readouts, you know, it's like, oh man, the buoys are starting to, start. So, you gotta, gotta start watching this stuff. And then, and nowadays with, yeah, it's like, here we go.

So, several days out, I use a, um, an app called SkySite. I don't know, do you guys use SkySite? Yeah.

Yeah, we use a lot, yeah.

so yeah matthew's awesome Awesome. So SkySight runs 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and I go, Matthew, you've got to run these models all night for me now because I'm doing these nighttime things. He goes, ah, no worries, mate, and you'll get the thing going all night. So I download all the stuff, but SkySight's been super, super good. I mean, I honestly have to say SkySight's probably changed soaring. I don't know how it has been for the paragliding world, but the accuracy and detail of Wave, because typically when we fly Wave, if you can use markers, you know, like rotor clouds, or or lenticulars, that that's your, that's your key. But the sky side, if we're flying in blue wave, you know, where there are no cloud markers, then you can download all the herd at an hr, um, models for, for all the vertical velocity for the, the day of, and then, and then have it on your phone, and just basically flying that magenta area of lift, and it is, it is so accurate.

I'm not saying 100 of the time, but it's, it's, it allows you to fly so much further, and I think more aggressively, because you can go, okay, there's a dead zone right here, I'm going to jam down because down your mammoth, it's, it's going off again, or leave mining, you know, so, um, according to sky, I'm going to

point. I'm going to point it and we're going to get it. We're just going to—we're going to fly through this kind of left less. Oh yeah, the area fast. We're going to punch it, we'll get there. Yeah,

Because I did these, I did a lot of these big flights when I didn't have that, and so you're kind of blindly flying down, kind of like, "Oh god, oh god," you know? And you're just just seeing the snow blowing off the peaks, going, oh, man, this is – if I have to land in Levi, which happened to me once, and it was – that's about as close to death I thought I was going to get. I mean, it was – that was scary. I mean, I'd never seen – Hold on. We've got to hear this one. Okay.

Take us through it. What happened?

Well, that was in the old Kestrel. So this is before Skysight. I blast out of Minden at 5 in the morning, and I get up to 24,000 feet away from – and I'm hauling ass south, and everything's good. and winds aloft are cranking so I'm running down towards Inyakon, south end of the Sierra and I get a beam mammoth and that whole area gets kind of goofy with wave and there's a lot of times there's some dead areas.

Because of the pass? Because of the low area there? We get hammered in that too. The terrain gets

goofy. Yones Valley is spot on. It's almost like a no-brainer there down there, but I was heading south and I remember looking out and I was at 24, 26,000 feet looking at the tops of these, you know, like Mount Tom and these big peaks. I'm going, "Holy shit, it's blowing." I mean, you can see the snow just blowing like miles off the peaks, you know? And you know, Mono Lake was just going off, you know, and just white-capped. And so I get down south, down the India Current, and come back north and I, I'm coming north out of the Owens Valley and I'm at 28,000 feet near, you know, I'm like near Mount Tom and I'm at 28,000 feet and I make a run and I noticed the clouds, the lenticulars, had pushed way east and it was just, it was a different, completely different look at sky like two hours later and I went, "This is strange." So I right, and it wasn't really marked, so I went to where the lift was when I came south.

I flew the same line coming north and it was the my very ominous head. It was like I was probably sinking 2,000 feet a minute. I went from 20,000 feet at Mount Tom here, you know, south of Mammoth, to being at Lee Vining at 3,000 AGL and just, you know, and so hold on

You're now, so you're in, you're, you're too far west. You're in the, you're in the

dump, yeah. So that it's what happened, that what happens, the winds had strengthened so much, the jet had pushed south so quickly, and I think the winds just got so hellaciously strong. There's a point where they're too strong, you know what it is? It flattened out that wavelength, so instead of that big sharp propagation, you know, right? Five miles east of the spine of the mountains, it was like the the wave was way east of Mona Lake. It was insane. It's like 15 miles downwind, and so, and I'm not going to go there, there's no place to land, you know? And surface winds were the whole model lake was just, just, just foamed up. So I'm at three, like three thousand feet AGL, and I'm looking at the lining, that's my only landing option other than maybe a field on the edge of, you know, next to model lake or something.

And I went, "Holy shit, that's the..." I think the only time I ever wish I was in a car or on the ground, just not in a plane lane, and uh, I mean the wind, it's a 90 degree land

In that much wind, and it's not really just gonna flop. Are you just gonna flop? Well, that's that's the

Problem, it's um, you know, you're kind of, you're, you're a test pilot now, and I, I, I, I remember going, shit, how am I gonna do it? I'm landing in a 90 degree cross when it was, it must have been blowing 40, you know, 50 knots, it gus, it, It was, it was just nuts. And so I set up and I'm crabbing, you know, pointing at the runway. And then I just, you know, you're just downwind at this 12,000 foot peaks and you just don't know what you're going to get into with turbulence and all this other crap. And so I'm at about 2,000 ADL now on downwind, super high.

And all of a sudden, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm adding some knowledge, you know, cause I'm adding some speed because I, you know, you just don't know what you're going to hit. And so suddenly I'm on downwind at about 2000 AGL and the air, the whole bottom drops out my, I mean, just the whole plane just drops. My legs, which were hanging out underneath this instrument panel, ripped through the pan, you know, just ripped the panel out of the console, so the console gets shoved up into the stick, you know, and so it's blocking the stick and I just throw the freaking panel forward and shove the stick over and my airspeed just went to like zero and I went, went, holy shit, here we go. And I thought it was going to die. And so I just dumped the nose over and just waited. And I probably lost, you know, a thousand feet in the whole thing.

Just get my airspeed back. I got my airspeed back and I just went, holy shit. And I just, I just pointed for the runway because there's boulders all around the airport property there. So, you know, you're not going to, you're not going to survive that. So I, all I want to do is get that, That glider in the confines of the airport, I didn't give a shit if it was going to roll up in a ball or what, I just wanted to get it over the fence line, you know, into the property. And so I did that, and I'm hauling ass now, you know, I got my airspeed back and and uh, turn on the final, get over the fence, and now I've got clipping along at a pretty good ground speed, and I'm—there's only so much wing down you can put into a crosswind, so I landed kind of at a crab, and you know, with my wing down, and then I'd land on the runway.

And then at about 20, 30, you know, 30 knots airspeed, I couldn't, I couldn't keep the glider lined up with the runway because the crosswind, you know, so it just went off in the sagebrush and then came to a stop. And then I'm like, "Holy shit." And so I'm like, "Is there anybody there?" No one's like, "No, it's a ghost town." So, so I'm sitting in the glider, and so I start—so I've got my big expedition suit, you know, buddy, my kind of client, K2, he gave me a suit, so I was wearing that. So you got all this shit in the cockpit, you're just jammed up on this thing, so I'm trying to undo my—as I'm trying to undo all this stuff, the whole glider picks up off the ground. Oh, because of the crosswind, because the right wing was kind of—it was the wings were semi-level because they're resting on the sagebrush, but it picked up just enough, like three or four feet off the ground, and slid downwind and settled down again.

I went, "Holy shit, it's gonna flip me over with this thing in it," you know, and then that's what's going to kill me. So I just opened the canopy, chucked it up, and then held on to it and was able to climb out and keep it from getting ripped out of my hands, and I ran to the upwind side of the wing and I just, I just got, got on top of the wing, and then the upwind side just kind of laid on it, and then I just remember just getting pelted with just gravel, it was blowing that hard. And then about 10 minutes later, and I go, and I'm thinking, "What am I going to do here?" Because there's no one around, I mean, there's no one, no one's around. So I go, at some point I'm gonna have to let go of this thing, and the glider's gone, it's, it's, it's toast. So, about 10 minutes later, this truck comes up, and it's this guy, Dennis.

He owns the mobile station down there, Leave Mining, right? And he's got a Cessna, um, like a 180 or something in the hangar. So, he comes up. We could barely hear each other because the wind's blowing so well. You know, we're screaming, like, "Yeah, I need to get, just get a car on the upwind side of this wing, so it doesn't flip over." So, he goes, "Okay, I'll get a big truck." So, so, yeah. So, Dennis gets all these Mexican guys, and they, you know, they, they come, come down with, it's like a watering truck or something like that, and they, they block the upwind side of the glider. And then we kind of like, "Okay, now you know, let's get our, you know, wits together." So, we got like six guys lifted up out of the sagebrush, and we just, just kept the truck on the upwind side of the wings. We push it back towards the, towards the hangar. We tied it down behind the hangar on the downwind side, and, and, uh, the wingtips were hanging out the way those guys were around.

Oh, shit! So, we get, I go, "How did you see me?" He goes, he goes, "I didn't see." He goes, he goes, "One of my cooks was standing at the window overlooking, you know, the Monolake, going, 'Hey, boss, look at this fucking wind is blowing!'" So, it was just, I mean, it was like, it, it was like the middle of the Pacific. The whole model lake was just a sea of foam, you know, and then he saw the glider and he goes, Hey boss, look, an airplane, the dentist went, Holy shit, that guy's going to be in trouble. So that's when they got in the truck. Luckily they saw me. So that day, stem eyes rolled over. I mean, trees are blown down and, and, uh, it was just, it was, it was hell. But these,

these days with things like sky site and being able to tap, you know, if you you got, I'm assuming sometimes you have cell cut. What do you have up in the, when you're really high, you're not getting cell anymore. No,

no, not really. Um, I do. We start to lose it at

17, 18. Yeah. Yeah.

You're right. Yeah, we, we do. It's kind of, it's kind of in and out. I've got a Garmin InReach so I can text with the, with the in reach. And then I also have a sat phone. So I've got on, like on the downwind flights, I've got the sat phone capability, I'll stay in touch with a bunny boy who's a retired meteorologist, a glider guy too, because he can give me, he's got to give me weather updates like when I blow, when I launch out of here, I go get up to 28,000 feet and then I go down wind. I got to stay clear of the Fallon restricted airspace, so I, I head out along the ranges, basically heading out towards the Rubies. So once I get the Rubies, yeah, I'm talking to Salt Lake, then Rubies just generate a monster wave, so so if I get the Rubies and I can get a big climb out of there and then make a run towards Logan, Utah, out towards Bear Lake.

And then Bear Lake, that whole range just west of Bear Lake generates big wave and then climb up there and then go off to the wind rivers and the bighorns and then shit. It's so.

That's insane,

man. That's insane. Oh, my God. But when you're back to this near-death thing, obviously really scary, that's 20 years ago. These days, can you just totally avoid that, or are you still taking that kind of risk? I mean, is that something that, had you had what you have now, technology-wise, SkySight, would you have known that? Would you have known not to

do it? Yeah,

I think SkySight

will show that. They'll, um, okay, Scott, I think SkySat, yeah. I mean, SkySat will show that, and nowadays a lot of guys go, well, I'm not going to take off today because the forecast for the winds to be, you know, gusting to 40, 50 knots, you know, when you I go, well, if, if you, if you base it off, if you just don't fly every time because it's the forecast, it's going to be, it may or may not be that. I don't know, but I said, if, if, yeah, if I just didn't fly every time because, uh, the forecast is going to be gusty and, and I didn't, it was uncomfortable. You'd never fly. So as long as you have alternates, you know, like something that's into the wind, whether it's Carson or going downwind and landing in Hawthorne or something, as long as you have some, some bailout points and then, you know, then you have options, you know, but you

said something, you said something interesting early on that I don't know that I understand. You said, usually it's winter. Cause you're looking for the lows and they come through with the Southeast. What I don't, sorry, sorry, sorry. Southwest. West, yeah. So, you know, you've got your—you've got your, you know, anti-cyclonic, uh, winds, and so you're—you're—you're—you're flying—you're flying pre-funnel frontal on that. But is that long enough for you? I mean, usually when I think of a low, it's coming through pretty fast as opposed to, you know, like, like a really sustained high pressure westerly, I would think would be more. Or the flight you did was in June. Was that a big low? Yeah, that

was a very unusual situation because to have a low come down this far, I mean, getting a low hit in Seattle or Washington in the summer, that happens. But for it to reach down this deep, this far south, very unusual. But it's a really good question you pose because there are times where lows or the trough is too deep and it's too rapid a front. run, I'm not saying you won't get way, you'll get way, but just a very short period of time. So you go, okay, what can I do with that? Is there anything can I do? A big flight, they might just pass on it, or just go monkey around. And I've done flights like that where it's just like, my last flight was just a really mediocre low, just like, yeah, it's, it's normally I wouldn't fly, but I still banged out like 1500 kilometers, you know, on that, that day.

So, and I think so, as long as

You don't get jaded, and you're just chasing the 3000k. You can go out on those shorter, deeper troughs and still fly away and have fun, but it's just... it's going to go through too fast to break any records, is that right? Yeah, do I understand that right? Okay.

You're right, because I mean they're—they're the classic situations is to get a prolonged, like a really kind of a shallow low that comes in; it just feeds energy for like two days, and we get that maybe, maybe once or twice a year, you know? So for me, what about

these, what about you, know like last winter when we had just, what did California get? 11 atmospheric rivers, does that work? Are those good, or they so

Those see those end up getting too wet because it's just too much moisture, and it's just, yeah, it once you know, once they have, there's a point where they have so much energy and so much moisture in them, they just cross the spheres and they end up, you know, a lot of times these lows were flying, these prefrontal systems, you know, whole west side of of the Sierra's just getting hammered, and you know, you're on the on the lee side and protected by essentially the Sierra's or whatever's holding back that weather. But um, like last year, there weren't too many flyable days where you could have done anything big because these things were just coming in and just pumping moisture, and you can't, you can't find that once, once that low, that jet access, it just ends up kind of hitting like Minden area and going south, and you're in an area of too much moisture.

So that's why looking at the 500 millibar, we call it the 564 line. That kind of marks the jet access. And then once again, sky side, you go, okay, sky side showing the moisture pumping through. Sometimes it'll pulse where the wave will shut down here and you can be down the Owens Valley just banging out turn points, run up and down, and then it'll pulse and then open up here in the afternoon. That's happened with me too where I sneak back home.

But there's a lot of experimenting, and there's still a lot to learn with this stuff, and that's what makes this stuff so fascinating. thing. This is just like with you guys, it's—it never gets boring because there's always, you know, there's always something you always find. You go, "What, what the hell was that all about?" You know that one thermal, or you know, I got low there. Why was you? That cloud wasn't working. You know, what the hell's going on here? And so, I mean, I

I and I, I want to talk about that too, but the the as I understand it with you guys with sailplanes, you know they're, you have a lot more knowledge because Cause it's just been going on a lot longer, but what we talk about in, in paragliding is that, you know, the, the amount of stuff to be done in this part of the world is literally mind boggling because we've barely touched the surface. Whereas in Europe, you know, our FAI triangles, you're talking, you were talking about how do we measure our distances? You know, our FAI triangles, same as yours, you know, those are the, those are the bees knees. That's where you get all the points. That's what we want to do. It's, it's a lot more technical and difficult than just going downwind one way, right? So, you know, coming home is, is way more sexy, but in Europe, you know, the, it'll really be a huge surprise if somebody flies a huge triangle that's not just a little bit bigger than what, what 50 people have already done.

You know, there's, there's nothing there is just, wow, that's never been done. I mean, in the Alps, most things have been done; they're just getting bigger. The gliders are getting better, you know, people are figuring it out. We're flying faster, you know, but like, what Othar, or what's his name, uh, the Klaus is doing in sailplanes over the Med, you know, I'm sure for you guys that's just like, whoa, that's a, that's a big deal. But here in the West, is it the same with you guys? Are, is there just, if you barely scratch the surface, or I think you guys just make the things bigger? Okay, yeah. No, I think

it's – I think the surface is being scratched, especially now with the capability of doing the – using the NVGs because now it's

– Describe what that is. We're going to get to the big pipe. For those who don't know, what did you just say? Yeah,

so the NVGs are the night vision goggles. And you're not going to make me this thing, but these are what I'm using. And so these are actual, these are used by the actual, this is used by the military. These are, these are the no shit. These are like 18 grand a piece for these things, you know, but it's, it's, it's insane. I mean, using these things and you feel once you get the experience with them, it's, I mean, that's about as close to flying off the boat as possible. You know, when you take off on a pitch black run, I took my buddy up a few weeks ago and he's another FedEx guy and he was just going on. Holy shit, because he was sitting in the back and he, I said, the first first touch and go because I've got the jet with the glider, he just put the goggles up.

He goes, "It's pitch black." He goes, "I can't see him." He goes, "I can't see a thing." He just heard the wheel touch down. He goes, "Oh shit, I guess so." The next way, he put the goggles down. He goes, "Oh my god, that's insane." Yeah, we're flying along the ridges, you know, right, right along the Kingsbury at freaking 11 o'clock at night and and it's pitch black. I go, put the goggles up. He goes, holy shit, we're dead. So I think with the goggles now, with Wave and Ridge, because Ridge will work at night too, and that's where I think you guys, because when you said you wanted to talk to me, I'm going, we got to figure something out with these paragliders. Something to get these guys to start smashing like dudes taking off the Appalachians with NVGs, paragliders, And and just doing a massive flight, just blowing everyone's mind, and I think that stuff is possible, you know, with you guys hold

On hold, on, I gotta, I gotta somehow silence all that last bit. I'm the only one that heard that. Wow, really? Oh my god, that's amazing. Yeah, you know, I keep thinking how it even occurred to us. I

You know, I because I don't know why it would totally work. I've always been intrigued with, with, you know, the paragliding and the hang gliding stuff. And, you know, I see you guys down in the Sierra and I just go, "Just you rip, pull up in the thermals." Like, man, that's cool. He's hanging out there, and I think it's kick-ass, yeah.

the, the only thing is, of course, is we can't fly in that kind of wind, you know we know, and that's why I say it would have to just be rich, yeah, I mean so rich, I think, I think

I honestly think something with ridge, uh, if you now with, yeah, with wave. I, I just, I've been thinking like constantly about how you guys can do something with wave. I don't think it's safe. They

have done it in hang gliders. I don't know if you saw that, uh, Johnny Duran, a Red Bull athlete, flew in wave and hang glider down in Australia, and you know, it was, it was pretty wild. I mean, the footage, that's mild way there.

You know, you told exactly, yeah, I

Don't know, I don't know that we could do it. Well, that's what I wanted to ask you. So, next, we're gonna get to this insane flight, but while we're still back here, the—what is—what does taking off look like? How do you get started? How does it work? How do you get going? You're talking about, you know, you're at 24,000 feet back in this kind of, by today's standards, so, so...

The typical scenario with, with, uh, you know, whether you, whether you tow or self-launch, you know, I can self-launch now because, you know, I've got the, I've got the jet that allows me to take off. Most the jets, very unique, typically you're going to either tow up or self-launch up to about three or four thousand AGL and, um, from Menden that, and that involves heading west from the airport, you know, four or five miles basically towards the Kingsbury Grade and, you know, at 395 and then climbing up to about three or four thousand AGL most of the times and then getting into the wave right there, working your way up and then getting into that laminar flow and then, you know, off, off, off you go. So, um, how long does that take, uh, like on that big flight I did?

It was, I probably ran the motor for like seven minutes, um, climbed to about really 30, 3500 HL and then shut it down and got right into the wave and then, and was able to, I, I was using SkySight because, you know, I had the NBGS. It was, it was, uh, it was dark outside obviously, so I had the NBGS, no, no markers, so I, I went right to where SkySight, there was just a little tiny pocket of where SkySight said there was going to be a wave. I just motored right to it. Boom, there it was. Shut the motor down. Stows and the fuselage doors closed. Now you're totally clean. And then, uh, you know, our flight recorders, that's when our flight recorders will monitor either they'll monitor that engine noise. And so it'll say, okay, that's when you're soaring. The beginning of your soaring begins when that motor is shut down so it's either through vibration or sound so and

When you, when you cut off the motor, or if you're, you don't have a motor and you, and you, you cut off your toe and you're in, you're in the way, what does it feel like? What is it? How long does it take to get from 3000 heo? It depends, sometimes.

You end up a lot of times, you end up in pretty rough air, um, kind of in the rotor sometimes. And yet, sometimes working up into that rotor, there's other times where you can climb right up and it's just you, because for a minute you'll typically fly through the rotor, so you get the shit knocked out of you flying through the rotor. And then once you punch through that to the west of that, or to the windward side, you get into this—it's glass smooth. It's just totally glass smooth, laminar smooth. I mean, you can put a glass of wine on the dash to fly the whole day that way, you know, in that smooth air really. But if you get down like in the, in the Sierra, because... because since the Owens Valley, since the Sierra is so high down there, if you get down to 16,000 or 17,000 feet in the Owens Valley, you can be hitting rotor already there.

And it's just – the Owens Valley is violent, you know. It just gets ugly. So I try to stay up high. We always say

it's one of the most violent places on Earth.

And it is for you guys too. Oh, yeah. I mean, especially with winds like that, it's – yeah. It's, you know, there's stuff that you, you know, you just, your palms get sweaty just talking about, you know, but. Well,

what kind of, you know, so I'm just trying to give those who don't, you know, I've never been in a sailplane. You got to pull, you got to come out and do this. You

know, I've

done, I've got. I swear to God, you'll blow your mind. I

will be the best.

I will never go to sleep. I will keep it rocking, buddy. I promise you, I will be the best co-pilot ever. I have got to do this. This sounds amazing. And those of you who are listening, when we get to this point, it's going to blow your mind. Yeah, when

you see the energy out there, when you're – I mean, we're indicating like in the Owens Valley, you're indicating 140 knots, you're going up 1,500 feet a minute at 20-something thousand feet. This is like, holy shit. You've got to be kidding

me. Seriously. I mean, last time I was

down there, I was – I had to stay below 18 because they didn't give me clearance because they were working a bunch of traffic out there. There, uh, Joshua Trees going up or Barstow because thunderstorms, and guys said, "I can't give you your stage two, standby, standby," and I'm literally at 17.5 at 141 knots indicated, which is my max, and he at that at altitude, and and I had the spoilers out trying to stay below 18,000 feet, and I'm just, just going, "You're going 170"

miles an hour. That's, yeah, so, so what, you know, what I'm—I'm trying to give people a sense for what this feels like when you're in the, when you're not in the glassy stuff and you're in the, you know, is it, is it when you're in a commercial jet landing at Denver on one of those really, really bad days and thunderstorms everywhere? Is that what it feels like? Does it, or is it worse? How much, how much can these planes that you're flying handle? They're really strong.

What you, what you don't want to do is fly into that kind of turbulence. Like, in that, the only turbulence you'll find associated with mountain wave is is that rotor, and that rotor will be basically from the ridge top level potentially down to the surface, you know? So, okay, um, once you get above—once you get above that ridge top level, so let's just say from heat, you know, in this area, from from here down to the Owens Valley, if you're above 14, 15,000 feet, you're not going to hit any of that rotor. But if you like fall out of the wave and you have to re-establish yourself into wave, you might fall down below the ridge tops, and that's happened to me plenty of times in those soft spots between like, uh, Bridgeport and, uh, Bishop, you know, where you're like, "Oh shit, here we go," you know?

And you're—you're 24,000 feet. Next time, next thing you know, because the sink rates, you can hit some heavy sinking wave, too, you know, where you're going down, sure, two, three thousand feet a minute. So it's—it's, oh, it's, it's, it's as bad going down as it is up. So if you get in the down part of that wave, let's say, um, Let's say you get, you drift too far downwind, or you're—it's blue wave and the Skysight, let's say Skysight's wrong, you're—you're fishing around and like, all of a sudden, holy shit, now now I'm in two thousand feet a minute sink, like, oh shit, you always work through your upwind side, but you might be end up below that ridge top level, and that's happening to me where you—you make a big jump in a dead zone and and now you're 13,000 feet and just like, just getting the shit knocked out of you, you know?

And you're working that rotor, trying to get back into the rotor, because that rotor will have up and down, you know? So the air is going, so you'll try to find more up than down and then re-establish yourself back in west of the road into the wave and then punch, punch to the west and get into that laminar. But when

you say you're trying to work it, are you working it like a thermal? Are you turning? Are you turning circles? It depends on the wind. Sometimes –

so with our computers now, we can see our track over the ground. So if I see myself – sometimes we're dealing with 60, 70-knot winds at 14,000 feet or whatever, but you make a turn downwind, you get a jet. And so a lot of times, you kind of, you finagle it, you know? You go, "Okay, maybe S turns will work," or if you can remain stationary, you know, that's the key. And a lot of times, the way of the wind's strong enough to where you can, you can literally, you'll have a zero ground speed and be going up, you know, 2,000 feet a minute. It's just, it's bizarre, yeah. Oh yeah, I mean, last time I flew, I had a minus, a negative eight knot ground speed, you know? So I'm climbing, getting pushed backwards. It's so, yeah, I mean, not

paragliding condition now. Holy cow, oh my, what's your what's your trim speed on that glider, um?

All right, now we're talking paragliding lingo here. Trim speed, well...

What's so-so dead stick dead air?

What are you? What, so we're probably about 60 knots. We call it like our best L over D speed, you know? It's like six, roughly 60 knots. Um, okay. The thing in, like, in these conditions, we fly out here in the Sierra, I mean, a lot of times, you know, you're full stick for it and just, you're, you're going VNE and it's just, you're just literally, you're just, you're cooking over the ground. You end up on a downwind leg, you know? I've had, I've had over 200, and 200, not, uh, ground 250, not, I think ground speed, it's great.

It's a completely different ball game, you know, but uh, um, you know, I mean, it's all relative, you know? Paragliding, soaring, you know, it's kind of mountain bike and road bike, yeah. But man, that's I

Mean, I've never, I've never, you know, I've flown, of course, with a ton of sailplanes in the Alps. You know, we, we do a lot of thermaling with sailplanes, and you know, they come through and often they're racing from Slovenia all the way through into Germany, and you know, they, they do everything that we do, but much bigger. They're just going way faster, it looks. But you know, when I, when I hear the stories, even friends of mine that fly sailplanes and also fly paragliders, they always kind of, they don't get that excited about it. They're always kind of, yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's cool, we go farther. But I mean, listening to your stories, is just this doesn't seem like normal sailplaning to me to have heard

These kind of stories, it's a little different. Yeah, I mean, I do a lot of the thermal stuff, you know, and I love it. But it's, it's when I start comparing, um, my big thermal flights to the wave flights, like I'm working my ass off in the thermal stuff, you know, and I'm just like, "Shit, I'm just spending all this time circling," you know? And then you make a big long time away, you know? Like, yeah, exactly, like this isn't too efficient, you know? But and that's what I think is, uh, is pretty cool with the wave stuff. It's just the, the energy that is out there, it is insane. I mean, there was back in the Sierra Wave project, there's a story of a guy in the P38, you know, that got in a mountain wave, um, near Bishop, and he shut both motors down.

The P38 climbed like 30,000 feet with no motors in a P38. What, yeah?

god man

That's incredible. I mean, the energy is just nuts, but um, how do you deal? How do you deal with ice? Is that a thing?

for you guys, yeah, a

lot of um canopy icing and stuff like that, but I um, you try to, you don't want to fly in clouds because you know, once you get that wing iced up, it's not coming off, you know, until you get down low. But um, we have um had issues with icing, but what I do now is I put a uh, like an inner layer of plexiglass, so it forms like two layers, and there's a, there's like an air pocket between the inner layer of plexiglass and the canopy, and that air pocket gets warm enough where no ice, no ice forms, and it's, it works magically, okay?

So you don't, but you don't have to worry so much on your... I'm not an airplane ailerons or whatever and cables or however whatever, the

flaps and all that stuff? Yeah, you do. I mean, but you'll only get into that stuff if you fly – if you're high enough and it's cold enough, that won't be an issue. But if you're, let's say, probably in the high teens or mid-teens, high teens and low 20s and you fly in the cloud, then you'll probably have some issues. I've got to

come fly with you, man. This stuff is incredible. This isn't something we can touch. I think the wave

stuff would be interesting for you because you guys don't do that. For you to see the amount of energy, it's mind-boggling. It's not Australian wave. It's not European wave. It's just big stuff. It's like Pipeline or Waimea or Nazare or something. It's the big stuff. It's the biggest of

the big. It's the big stuff. So tell me – again, I keep alluding. Sorry, listener, but this is so fascinating. Today, I keep alluding to this big flight we're going to get there, but the... tell me about your aircraft, because the... I have some sailplane friends, when I... when I told them, "Hey, I'm going to get Gordon on show, what do I need to know?" They were all really excited about your plane. What? Why is your plane so special? Well,

There's only four in the world that are, um, and there's nothing special about the sailplane itself. It's, it's a Shemp Earth Arcus, um, glider manufactured in Germany. It's kind of a, it's the Ferrari for two-seaters right now, you know that? That's, that's being built probably the most popular high performance two-seater out there. So, um, the story on my glider is that about five years ago by a guy by the name of Dennis Tito, he spent a week up in the space station with the, went up with the Russians, you know guys, you know adventure, big money. He ordered four Arkuses from Germany, brought him over here. He was very fascinated with the wave stuff and flying wave.

He said, "Okay, I want a jet engine put on him on all four of them." He had that done and, oh, he told the manufacturer, he told Champ Earth, he said, "Hey, I want, I want you to do some, uh, some, uh, redesign here, figure something out so I can fly at a higher airspeed than the manufactured"

the placarded airspeeds so I wanted basically a faster glider, I want the jet engine. I want auto flaps on it, so I don't have to monkey with the flaps, and then I also want all the instruments coded for night vision goggles, and I want night vision goggles. And so he had four of these gliders made up, brought them over here; his intent was to have two down in Argentina to fly the wave down there, there, and uh, so he had two in Menden, and I think he shipped a couple down there to Argentina, did some big flights down there and up here, and then after about four years he goes, "I'm done." And so he sold, why two? Two, why?

Was he? Why was he done? I don't know, no idea. I got check the box.

Yeah, okay. Yes, so, so two were sold to Airbus. So Airbus bought two, um, for doing research and things like that. Those two are still here in Menden, and so these

aren't part of the perlan project, yeah, well

yeah, well, no, technically no, but they're owned by—they are owned by Airbus. Some of the Perlan guys are using one of the gliders—gliders for contrail testing, that kind of stuff. So it's kind of torn up, and then the last two were for sale, and the buddy of mine was doing all this flying with Dennis Tito, and so when that those last two, you know, were up for sale about a little over a year ago, I'm like, "Holy shit, I got this. Is this is" the ultimate machine. It's like there's nothing more you could do to sweeten up a glider for, for high altitude, long distance, fast wave flights. And so I jumped on the the newest one of the four Dennis Tito sold it to me and then it was game on right off the bat, you know?

So, so the first year, this is the first year year I've had it, you know? And you know, doing these flights, so yeah, I've got, I don't know, a bunch of 2,000 kilometer flights that big one. And then, uh, I've got a bunch of thousand kilometer flights and thermals, and so, um, yeah, it's just been so... I just, I just hit the ground running with this thing, and then I finally got called on the NBGS. Because you got to be signed off with the night vision goggles, so I got a guy to sign me off with that. And then Tim Garter, who who flew with Dennis Tito, he was called on the NBGs and and uh, we did some night stuff here, um, because it's a whole different ball game, you know? It's, it's, you gotta, you gotta be kind of on your game with flying at night. You'll see night vision goggles because everything's field of vision, you know, your field of view. Is really narrowed down, so it's, it's, it's a different ball game, but once you get used to it, it's, it's cool.

But anyway, I might go for this. This is the machine, and I just like started like, going, "All right, you know?" So the first, the first year, um, it was pretty much doing, I, I might land at night and stuff like that. But then on that June 19th flight, I'm like Okay, I think I feel comfortable off of these goggles to try a at least an overnight flight. I had no intention of flying that far; I just called my partner. I sold half the share of a partner, a partner of mine that was a FedEx guy, but not yet rated glider. So he, so his first flight in the glider was like, well, a thousand kilometer thermal flight with me. This second one was another thousand. Then he did a 2000 kilometer. So I called him up on this flight on June 19th.

Go, Hey man, I said the wave's going to line up. It's just, it's not classic. It's just, it's going to be an okay wave day. But if you want to try to just do an overnight flight and, you know, Or just fly all night because my main goal was to kind of see how I was going to be able to handle the temperatures up at altitude in the 20s at night. Because typically it will get unbearably cold, you know, because I've flown at night, but not for long, not for hours, but it gets wicked cold. So like, let's see what we can do here. So that was kind of the whole purpose of that flight was just to kind of fly, you know, at night till like noon. And then I, I texted Matthew, "Scutter sky," so I'm like, "Matt, check out the weather." I mean, "What are you thinking?" He goes, he goes, "Yeah, the wave's gonna shut down at about two o'clock." I go, "That's what I'm thinking." I said, "Well, can you run the bottles all night?" "No, in the afternoon." So I figured it was gonna go from the evening, you know, all night, and then until two o'clock.

So, and it was not a classic day. It was on a scale of one to ten, it was probably maybe a five, so You know, after I'd land, I go, "Holy shit, on a good day, man, imagine what you can do." You know, way

No way, so this is just an average day, yeah?

That was, I probably would not have, I probably would not even have flown. It was more of like, "Hey, let's just go do an all-nighter," you know? Because it was, because it was June 19th, I go, "Well, shit, it's, it's warm, it's not wicked cold, it's not winter, it's, you know, I go, let's just, it's going to be tame as far as temperature temperatures goes. Let's, it's like, Bruce, if you want to go up, we'll go do some NVG work, you know?" And so it turned out, um, yeah, we went. Do you have some kind of heater?

In there, do you have any—no, do you have any warm air blowing on you or anything? Oh god, no.

Just because you're just, you know, what do you?

What do you wrap up in? What are you wearing so...

Some guys ask about the electric stuff, you know? Electric clothing. The problems with that is, the problem with that is, if it, first of all, it fails and you don't have the the backup. In other words, the thick stuff, it's game over. It's like, oh, we're done. Yeah, you know? Yeah, might as well land. So, I wear a big climbing, you know, that expedition suit, and then some layers underneath. The problem with that is, if you get down low and you end up in a thermal situation, that happened with me, like, when I flew my cast. I flew from here to Steamboat, Colorado, and I ended up over the Wasatch. Well, wave completely fell apart. It's like, now I'm down thermals and I'm just pouring sweat in the cockpit. You know, it's just like, holy shit, I'm, they're just trying to stay hydrated, you know? So, that can turn into a bad situation if you end up low, you know?

But this flight, we suited up and, and, uh, you know, it's like, yeah, what time you want to meet? Yeah, you know, it was Father's Father's Day, the day before, so my dad was in town, so We had, we had dinner and we just kind of moseyed out the airport like, "Yeah, shit, we still gotta put gas in the thing." And so we just took our time and took off at 2:30. And just, why 2:30? That's just because it was too, I don't know, it was just 2:30 and it was so I was so unprepared for the flight. Not unprepared, but I was, I didn't really have big ambitions, I mean, so much so that I didn't, I didn't call Oakland Center for a clearance until we're actually pulling the glider out with the car we're, and I just called Oakland Center at like two in the morning like, "Hey man, I'm, uh, I'm gonna be launching it like half an hour." He goes, "You glide in a glider?" I go, "Yeah." He goes, "He goes," I got NVGs.

And he goes, huh. He goes, I said, I'm looking for a clearance so we can get a clearance in the Class A. He goes, hmm. He goes, well, we're not too busy. He goes, that shouldn't be a problem. He goes, let me go to the floor and talk to the controllers and let them know what's your call sign. You know, 189 Del Tango. I was like, okay, I'll let them know. So as soon as we climbed up and got to 14,000 feet, they gave me an IFR clearance and said, go have at it. So it was a really windy evening. You know, winds are blowing. it was almost too much for you know too much crosswind for takeoff but uh you know we did on nbgs when a pitch black runaway and then um from

menden yeah

Yeah, man. And, uh, so we like, I said, we climbed up about 30, you know, 3, 3,500 AGL or something. And, um, the little funny thing is, you know, your suit, it's just the two of us. I don't have a support team. It's like, "Let's get our shit and throw it in the airplane." You didn't have

You didn't have ground, you didn't have a ground person. No, no, like a weather person. No,

We're just, you know what's, yeah, it was just you had low

expectations, you're just gonna go, you

know, and I never have it. I just, I'm always kind of a one-man show anyway, you know? I'm a big support team, you know? Launching me, run the wings, I just let the, you know, do my thing and keep it simple. So anyway, Bruce, the guy that was flying with, I put him in the front seat because I'm six-five and it's more room in the back seat, and so so he never, he never used NVGs. So I think I'm a tutorial on, you know, do this, don't, don't do this, you know, make sure that, you know, so he was clueless on the NVG. He'd never used them, you know, so he sits in the front seat and I said, just get in, you know, you're, you're putting 10 pounds of shit in a five pound bag, you know, it's one of those deals. So he said, just put all your stuff on the ground here. So keep in mind, it's, it's pitch black. So I got the truck running the lights on, you know, lighting up the fuselage.

And so he's, he gets in and he's trying to get squared away and the wind's blowing and like crazy, and so I start handing him all this shit on his lap and he's, you know, he's not used to these big flights, he's not used to the glider thing, you know, so he's, I get down to the last few items and there's a blue cube thing and I go, "Bruce, what the fuck is this?" He goes, "Oh, it's a bluetooth speaker. I thought we could maybe listen to some music and we're up there." I go, "Are you shitting me?"

What do you think this is? You know, get some Michael Buble going here. What? So we don't have the room for this crap, so you know, and he had a big, you know, it's like he was, you know, had this five pound bag of nuts, and I'm like, dude, what do you, what is this? Naked and afraid, or something?

So anyway, I get him in the front seat and I get in the back, and so it's kind of chaotic because the winds are blowing. I get the motor started and, uh, we start, you know, we start a takeoff roll and, you know, it's noisy with that, that jet going and all. And then we get to about 20 knots, it's a big enough runway, so, so we get to about 20 knots, I hear this flapping, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, and I go, "Oh shit, what's that?" So I, you know, brought the throttle back to idle, stop the airplane, and I, I had a figure, it was my shoulder harness. Sure enough, my shoulder harness was hanging outside of the canopy and, uh, banging on the leading edge of the wing. So I opened the canopy up, you know, and strapped in, and I just got, I, I just got, you know, first of all, fatigue, I was up all day, you know, got up at seven o'clock that morning, so I was, I'm dead tired and I'm doing this shit with these MBGs, I'm going, "What am I doing here?" So we, so I, I got the shoulder strap on

We blast off, we get to about 100 feet, canopy opens, holy shit, and I go, "You know, it's one of of those things that add, these things that add up." You go, "I probably should not be doing this," you know, and I came back close to

to get the three, we got a rule: if it's three, you got to abort.

I was able to grab the canopy and we got it shut. I'm like, "Man, this is just not... this is not going well, you know?" And that had never happened to me, you know, ever. Yeah, I'm going, you know, maybe this... This is not just the right thing. So we just, we motored out and gotten on the wave and climbed up to 24,000 feet and then headed on south and then started our journey, you know, 17 hour and 40 minute journey. So, so I,

I read your, I read your article. I would love, I know you've given other interviews about this, but it was beautiful that you, you talked about the beauty, even with the NVGs, what does it look like? What, what do you? That was wild. I've seen a bunch of your photos flying these FedEx jets, you know, around the world, and they're amazing. And those of you listening, you got to follow Gordon on Instagram. But I mean, what are you seeing that night? Because it just sounds like—I think it just would blow my mind if you

See that it's, you know, it's wild because, you know, we headed south, which was right in the direction where, you know, you know, the Milky Way was just hanging over the entire canopy, and so you're sitting there with your dim-lit instruments, biggest snow

year in history, you know

You're sitting there with these the dim instruments, your barrier is going, you know, and you're at 20,000 feet and it's pitch black outside and you know, you know, because there's nothing between here and like Bishop, right? And so you know, it's just magical, you know, and it wasn't cold and I remember telling Bruce, I said, "This is just nuts. We're just looking at the the Milky Ways." And and it's a shame that everyone doesn't have a chance to look through like legit night vision goggles because the amount of stars you see is unbelievable. It's, I mean, you're looking at satellites, you know, like left and right shooting stars, you know, all you know. And here you are with a in a glider, 27,000 feet, flipping along 150 knots over the ground, you know, just it's like it was just magic, you know, and you're the only gig in town because there's no one up there, you know, and so it was, yeah, it was, it was neat.

We get down towards like Mammoth and Everything's going well, and we had an issue getting into the Joshua complex because they didn't open the airspace till five in the morning, which I didn't know about. So, Oakland Center's going, "Hey, you need to get below 18,000 feet." Um, I'm like, "Well, don't you handle the airspace when Joshua's not working it down there in the Owens?" And they said, "No, they said you got to get below 18." I go, "So what? No one's airliners on loud above 18 in that Joshua complex." He goes, "No, it's going something." This is not right. I go, "Can you just verify that?" He goes, "Let me check with my supervisor." So we're flipping along. I don't keep in mind, I don't want to get below 18 because you start getting into that rotor zone and you know, and uh, you know, it's pitch black outside. So he goes, "Yep, sorry, supervisor says you gotta get below 18." So you, you know, we're just kind of a bean Mount Tom.

And I started just shoving the nose over, descending and flying out of the wave. Well, flying into the Sierra, out of the wave, and then got to the airspace just below 18 and was able to stay out of the bumps, you know, all the way down. And then, you know, made my first turn point down near Inyokern, hooked back north. No,

wait, how far south did you get? Are you going off the Sierras?

Yeah, we went down just about south, just about south of in just about a beam in your current, so oh

wow okay so

south of highway reservoir, you know, and uh, you know, so we turned there, and that's kind of where the wave kind of shuts down because the mountains change direction that, you know, down further south, it takes more of a northwesterly flow, so the wave kind of shut down there. So I, I flew into a quite a big area of dead zone, like sink, sink, sink, and there's, there's a point where you cry open, you okay? We got to turn back north, get back into the energy, because if you, if you fly too much into that sink and then you turn northbound into the sink, now you're losing a lot of altitude, you know, next thing you know, you're down at 13,000 feet and just getting, getting the crap beat out of you. So yeah, anyway, we turn back around and then about 450, you know, Josh Approach gets on the frequency, "Hey, all your aircraft." Josh Approaches up, you know, you know, up, up on frequency.

So I called him, I said, "Hey, look for my stage two clears." He goes, "You're cleared stage twos," which gives me clears up to 29,000 feet. So then I just climbed back in the low 20s and then worked north, and then right about a beam, Mount Whitney is where the NBGs came off, that's where I didn't need them anymore, and that was it. The sun's coming up Yeah, it got... it was just all pink, and it was just... it was insane, you know what?

Was it? What was it? What were you? Get, what was it blowing?

On Whitney, you think, um, that day the winds a lot where it was, probably Whitney was probably 40 knots, 50 knots on on the peak, because we we didn't see much up north, a north arena we saw about 70 knots, you know, of wind up up higher, but that day was fairly, fairly mild, like I said earlier, if you get too much, too strong wind, it just, it just doesn't about what you know people think, oh, the stronger the wind, the better way it's going to be, not necessarily, you know, it could be too strong, and I've had that happen, and that really hampers your movement over the ground too, you know, I've, I've been down your Bishop where it's, it's literally a hundred, we had a hundred knots on the nose all the way to Menden, you know, and you're going, how am I going to make ground speed?

You know, you're doing 10 knots over the ground, you're watching semi-trucks freaking blown by you going up 395 past ma, 'am this is embarrassing, you know So it just gets funky, you know what?

You, you said it was kind of a five out of a ten day, but was this nice wave? I mean, was it nice wave flying? It just wasn't the it.

wasn't strong. It wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't the light hair on fire type, you know? Like the, the Owens Valley, and I told Bruce, he said, "Man, this is not, this is, we, we're having to change gears here where you're like, okay, let's slow up a little bit, you know? You gotta slow up, you know? There are bigger dead zones, and this is not, you can't just rock it all day." I mean, there are days where you're, you're, I mean, like I said, you, I mean, I'll get in the Owens Valley at 18,000 feet and doing 140 knots indicated, and I get down low behind them at 26,000 feet, still doing 140 knots indicated, climbing, just like, holy shit, it's almost, it's almost eerily strong, you know? Where you go, it's just, this is just scary, you know? Like, this is gonna let me down, you know? So there's only so much so fast you can fly before, before you start fluttering, you know?

So you don't want to, you don't want to get fluttered, and

I'm sorry for the the ignorance here, but as I understand, you know, wave kind of stacks on that. What makes wave? Is it stacks on top of itself, correct? Those of you listening can't see my hands, but it's kind of, you know, it's it's kind of in a sense folding on top of, you know, that's how you can kind of keep benching up, correct? Is that I understand that right?

No, if you—if you picture like a, like a big rock in a stream, you will see that that water is water works just like air, right? So you'll see that water flow over that rock and then downstream. If there's no other rock, it's just flat gravel bottom, you'll see those, those harmonics of wave, and that's exactly how mountain wave sets up. So, so there will be a line, which is typically maybe half mile in width, that you can—can work the leading edge of that. Like, let's say there's lenticular, that wave will be, that lift will be on the leading edge or on the windward side of that lenticular cloud downwind of the mountain range, and that's typically—let's just say over the 395, you know, maybe five miles east of the spine of the, of the range for the most part.

If you know where that wave is, you can really use that to an advantage, whether you're in a power plane or a glider. You know, I may hear guys, they're—they're down, you can hear them just getting the shit knocked out of them, you know. You know, they're talking to Joshua, they're in a Cessna or something going, man, I'm reporting severe turbulence. And I'm going, man, if this guy just moves upwind, you know, two or three miles, he can shut his motor down if he wants to fly the whole way, you know, all the way up in glass in the air. So, so on the backside of that, on the downwind side of that, you know, that air mass goes up, it's coming down equally as strong. So that's what, that's what's killed a lot of people, you know, or, you know, first of all, you get the downwash off the Sierra. If you're too close to the range, you'll just get that downslope wind that's just sometimes too strong for an average airplane to even out-climb, you know.

And then downwind of that, you'll have the propagation of air mass going up in the primary wave. And then in between the up and the down part of the wave, you'll have that rotor up at kind of the ridge top level that is very, very violent. but

It won't, it won't. I guess maybe I wasn't describing it right, or maybe I'm probably just lack of understanding, but it won't keep. So, if you're looking at my hands here, that you know you get the wave coming off lee side of the Sierras, that's what you're searching for. Couldn't you just—you're flying north, couldn't you just hang a 90 degree right and keep flying that wave in the Nevada? Or I mean, just keep going east and keep, keep going with that wave, wave, well, with the harmonics, well, yeah, if you

Yeah, if you commit to like a downwind flight, right, which I, which I've done, you know, I climb up in the primary wave here, get up to 28,000 feet, and then go east. The typical, typically those harmonics, they'll start getting lower. Like the secondary wave east of the primary wave will be set up lower, and then they'll progressively get, get lower until it eventually dampens out. So, but yeah, I mean, uh, like going eastbound, what you'll try to do is pick up different wave systems off of different mountain range, like the Toyobies or the Rubies, or you know, these big pilot peaks, you know, north of Lovelock, you know, these ranges. Sometimes you'll get, you'll get good wave off of those too, so

You can get new primary wave exactly, so if

You go downwind. You basically go downwind just as slow as you can, like minimum sink speed, so you're like at 50 knots. It's very comfortable. You're not flying, you're not hauling ass, but your ground speed is, because you got an 80-knot tailwind, so you're just clipping over the ground and you're letting the wind kind of do the work. So you just kind of float downwind and then maybe try to fly 100-150 miles downwind until you get to another big range, and then once you get downwind of that, you kind of feel it. And as you're going downwind, that very old start going, you know, like, oh, shit. Then you got to turn into the wind like really quickly because your ground speed so flat fast, you'll fly out of the wave really quickly. So once you turn into the wind, now you're zero ground speed again, kind of nibbling around, searching for the big stuff. And then once you find it, you stop.

You just point into the wind and you got hopefully a zero ground speed. You go up like an elevator back up to twenty eight thousand feet and then turn downwind again. Yeah, exactly. so okay

So you're, the sun's coming up, you're over Whitney. That's beautiful. You've got, you've, you've been in the air. What? Two, three, four, five, six. It gets pretty, pretty light. It gets light at five, I guess. Probably five-thirty, probably.

Three, three hours? Uh, yeah, okay. Three, four hours? Probably four hours. Okay.

Okay, so you're almost halfway through, right? Just getting—what time did you land? You just, just getting going, yeah?

We landed, I think, after sunset. Yeah, it was so... this, yeah, it was four hours in a 17-hour, so we, we still had 13 hours. So, yeah, it, yeah.

What do you guys do? Are you taking shifts? Are you taking naps, or what? How does this work? No,

I stayed awake the whole time. What I try to do is, um, I tried to just kind of close my eyes, you know? In the airline world, you kind of learn to, to kind of take cat naps, and you know, these little cat naps seem to work pretty well. But I turned the volume on the vario up so I could kind of hear what's going, because Bruce wasn't really aware of where to fly, you know? And you can get yourself in the world to hurt like so quick, you know? If you, if you take a crab angle out, you know, on the south and north and on track, and now, now your next thing you know, you're going down 2,000 feet a minute going, don't do what happened, you know? So I, I, I just, I stayed awake the whole time, but I, I tried to practice. I closed my eyes, and you know, I was just listening to the vario, and as soon as I would hear something, you know, like, uh, where's, what happened to the left, you know?

I didn't wake up, and I never, never slept. I never got in a rammer like that, you know? But, um, yeah, yeah, you just drive, you just run on adrenaline, you know how that goes? So that's pretty much how it went. But it's funny, the mindset said went from, okay, well, we'll, uh, you know, we can, I think we get a thousand kilometers, no problem, you know? So we're coming back like, yeah, that's cool, you know? We'll get, we got a thousand kilometers done, and then we got north of Reno and too much moisture, uh, north of Reno, and the wave got really soft like, okay, here we go south again. And so we ran back south, and we pretty much ran back down, and, uh, you know, nothing really, it was nothing really hard, you know? Other than the fatigue. on the most of these legs, and so we ran south again, and yeah,

there was, there was points where you're going, man, I'm dragging, you know, it's just I'm hurting here, I'm tired. We went back pretty much down the Indian current, came back north, back up to Reno. I'm like, "Okay, shit, if we can get 1500 kilometers, that'd be cool," you know? So we, we tagged that, you know, we got that notch, and so So we went south again, and now it's like, oh, shit, I think we can get 2,000 kilometers. That's pretty cool, you know? And that finally became real. What's your

average speed?

For the entire flight, we averaged 110 miles an hour.

So, you know, on a less than stellar day, you know, it was really kind of weird. So that was a five-turn-point flight, and that's why it's recognized by the IGC for like a world record because it was – we used more than three turn points, but it's recognized by OLC and then WeGlide. What was the total distance? 3,058 kilometers. So Klaus had done 3,008 kilometers. Was that 1,900? That was 1,900 statuette, I think. That's what it comes out to. So yeah, so that the, I mean, fast forward everything, the very last leg, it was like, "Oh shit, I think we can get maybe three thousand k out of the same." So I'm like, "Bruce, uh, I said, here's the thing, I said the wave's supposed to shut down there's." We saw all day that north of Reno up like near Susanville, and that whole area, there was just a shit ton of moisture, you know?

There's just no wave up there, and, uh, so I figured we would have to stretch our flight, a final leg would have to. We would have to get to like Alturas or Cedarville or somewhere up in that area, and I thought the likelihood of that was gonna be so slim because, first of all, there, there wasn't any wave forecast, and then secondly, there was so much moisture up there. So I told Bruce, on our final leg up the Owens Valley, "So let's just, let's just get up. If we can get up to Reno, we'll just, we'll just kind of feel it out, and if it's, if it's shitty, let's come back and land." And, you know, we will have gotten over 2500 kilometers, which is still pretty, pretty freaking and good. So, so we get up the last leg, we get up. So now I'm starting, I'm not tired anymore because I'm like, "You know, I'm just, I'm like, that this whole thing could become now you're old." Yeah, now you're starting to wake up again.

It's like you're on a mission now. So we get up to Reno, and it's, it's very, very weak wave, you know, just so spotty, and Skysight, once again, was just working really well. There was, there were some markers, so I get just west of the Reno airport, and I, I park in the wave, and I've got zero ground speed, and, and I'm like, "Bruce, start, start working the numbers. We need to figure out where we can go." And, uh, and he goes, "Okay." Um, I said, "I think Alturas or Cedarville will get us over the 3 000 kilometer mark." He goes, "Yeah, I agree." I said, "All right, start getting fine in the weather." So we had a stratus absb antenna and four flight on the iPhone, and so he starts getting all the weather for this place. He goes, well, Alturas is calling 1,500 scattered, 2,200 scattered, 3,000 overcast.

And it's like, holy shit, man, there's a lot of weather up there. So what about Cedarville? He goes, no, there's no AWOS for Cedarville. There's no weather reporting there. So I figured, I told him, I remember telling him, I said, Bruce, I said, typically east of that range of Cedarville, you're out in the desert. So it's kind of like all those mountains are holding the weather back. So it will probably be clear in the Cedarville area, so my flight computer was saying, "You know, from our altitude, there's no way we had it made." You know, we were gonna, we were way below glide, so I'm like, "Oh shit, you know, if we can, we can at least manage a lower sink rate, you know, maybe zero sink for a while, then we could maybe kind of get up to glide." So I called, I called Oakland Center, I said, "Hey, is there any chance I can get higher?" He goes, "No, unable, you know, traffic or something." I said, "Hey, this," and I actually told him, I said, "This, this could potentially be the longest"

glider flight in history, um, is there anything we can work at? You know, and he goes, "Standby." You know, he goes, "All right, you cleared up to—got what it was, 250 or something." So I just sat like one or two knots of lift, just going, just climbing so slowly, just milking everything I could, and I got—I was as high as I can. I said, "All right, we're out of here." You know, so we started on the

Day is it now? It was like four or five, six.

o'clock, or six o'clock?

okay yeah

It's getting, yeah, the sun angle's starting to get low, but I'm going get mbgs right round two on the mbgs.

Whatever, and uh, so we started making a run out to the northeast, and I saw a huge layer of undercast. So we were headed out towards – in the direction of Alturas from Reno. So we kind of had a – we had – I don't want to say quartering head. We were tracking about – our heading was about 340. We're tracking about 030 because we've got about 80 knots of wind. So the winds weren't really hurting us too much, but I started kind of heading for this big undercast, which is, I couldn't tell how far off in the distance it was and where we would be in relation to the undercast once we got there, but I go, "Bruce, we can't fly. We're not flying through that.

We're gonna have to duck underneath that or pull the spoilers out." And I hope, I was hoping we didn't have to do that, so I sent on this long kind of efficient glide out towards this undercast in the direction of Alturas, and we finally got to the undercast and we're maybe five miles from it. Like, this is gonna work out perfectly, you know? I can just shove the nose over, we'll slide underneath, underneath it. I don't have to pull spoilers out and, you know, kill my glide tail tourist. So I shoved the nose over and I slid underneath this thing, and then it got pretty dark, and now there's this freaking snow showers left and right, and I'm just flying in between this stuff, trying not to get ice on the wings, you know? So I'm just kind of, you get to do that.

I'm weaving through this stuff and I'm going, yeah, I said, "You know, the fact that we're not not doing a straight line, I said this is, this is hurting us, you know." And so, um, finally, you know, we get to, we get to maybe 50 miles south of Alturas and I, I can look off in the distance because it was hard to see because of all these snow showers, but I look off in the distance and I see this, the sun hitting this big patch of ground. I mean, oh shit, that's nice, a big blue hole, you know? So I kind of headed for it and I got in this big blue hole in this valley and then I made a left turn towards, directly towards Alturas and we, now we're probably maybe 40 miles from Alturas and I just hit a, I just, I came up to a wall of moisture all the way to the ground.

I mean, I felt like I was flying on the East Coast or something because of all these different layers of clouds and I went, yeah.

no i

said in the computer, said, "I'll never forget it." Said 2,988 kilometers. I was 12 kilometers short of 3,000 K, and you're looking at this wall of moisture going, do you, you know, you kind of go and do I do it? Do I do it? And I go, I go, Bruce, you can't do it. We'll kill ourselves if we do this, this stuff's going to the ground, you know? And, uh, I go, cause I don't have pedo heat or anything, you know, someone leaves all my instruments with the icing if I fly into the stuff and Bruce goes, well, it's only 30 miles. I go, we're done. We can't do it. So I flipped a U-turn. You can see it on the trace. I sent you the WeGlide link, but I did a complete U-turn. I said, put Cedarville in the computer. So we got that in the computer and said we're like 4,000 feet low.

Plus our direct line from our point there to Cedarville, we would have had across the entire range, mountain range, which, you know, it was co-op. There's no way you can do that. Plus it was so much cloud cover. So I had to go south first and then go to the south end of that range over this big high plateau. So, before I could start going east out towards the desert and to where the Cedarville Valley is, so now my computer is giving me my straight line computation, but I'm having to go make this big shuck and jive around the south end of this range. So all my numbers are out to lunch, so I'm going, so I end up over this big plateau and I'm just kind of milking it, going, "Holy shit, I don't want I'm gonna get over the ridge here," you know, because we had like 15 miles to go and I'm just a couple thousand feet over there over this plateau and I'm just just kind of milking it eastbound.

And you know what? Oh shit, there's a field down there, like a farmer field. I keep in mind, I, I've got the, I've got the engine, but will it's, you know, is it going to start? I don't know, you can't rely on it because you have to, first of all, you have to extend it, then you have to start it. You know, is it even going to start? So you can't really rely on that. I see a farm field out there and I once we got a beam, I go, there's no way we could have landed there. It was a fight dream, but I ended up seeing the... when I saw the edge of the ridge, and I kind of just eyeball, I said, "I think we're going to make it." So we were able to cross over that ridge, and then once I got the sky started opening up a little bit more, and then I saw like a cumulus cloud over the valley about 30 miles south of... 20 miles south of Cedarville. My computer still said 2988 kilometers, so I hadn't, and I was pissed.

I go, "Here, I'm going all this way east, but I'm not adding miles, right? I can't go north, no, I'm going... shit." So I... I go, "Bruce, I'm gonna head for that... that cloud." And, uh, and once I was able to see it, I go, "Shit, that's a rotor cumulant, that's like a rotor Q cloud that was associated with wave," and I could see some ragged like wave that was setting up in the valley there. I went, "Shit, I think I can, if I get underneath this cloud, I can work." So I get underneath this cloud, and I'm maybe... 2500 AGL, and I still can't make Cedarville right. But there, now there's a dry lake I can land on, which was wet, you know? The glider, I've been there for days, but I end up circling underneath this thing and there's one knot, two knot, three knots left. Awesome! And I get up and then I push west of it into wave and it goes laminar, and all of a sudden it just goes and I sort of press north and the computer freaking finally numbers matched up

Cedarville and said, "You got it made." And I'm like, "Holy shit!" So I ran north in that wave on the east side of that Cedarville range, the name of the range, and I shot right over Cedarville and I go, "That's, you know, by then, it was already 3030 kilometers, or whatever, and went all the way north until I ran ended up freaking snow showers again, and then just that was the—that's where the distance was calculated all the way to that northern point. Then I turned south and came to Cedarville and and uh, and landed, and we had, you know, 3,058 kilometers in bags, so we landed and cops show up and like, "What the hell are these guys doing here?" The guy's on the phone going, "Yeah, that's uh 189 Delta Tango, I confirm he's landed at Cedarville." And I go, "What?" Was he goes, "That was the FA calling because they're wondering what they, they thought you were landing at Alturas because that was the last thing I told him I was landing Alturas and you didn't." So the cops went to Alturas first, they didn't see an airplane that's just got planted in the mountain somewhere, so they go, "Shit, let's try Cedarville." So like, "Dude, can you help us push a glider out of the way?" So we get out of this glider, we tied down.

I had some tie down rope and tied it down on the line, and you know, now it starts kind of raining and drizzling and and um, the guys tried to hook us up with a motel and there was nothing around, everything was, you know, but now it was dark and uh, so we showed up in these big goofy suits on these expedition suits, finally we, he got some lady at the hotel to our motel to open the open the door. She goes, "Yeah, I got one room left." And so we uh, we got a room and then Bruce found some people, you know, a few doors down, they had a bottle of scotch and he bought a bottle scotch, you just got hammered, that was good time

You didn't sleep, obviously.

Because you're just fired, I was gonna say...

There's no way you slept, even as even as exhausted as you were. You said, "Fired up," that's amazing. I don't understand the the the record thing. So it was the longest flight that's ever happened in a sailplane, but it's not a record because it can only be three points, is that right? Yeah, that's a max.

That's a max that the IGC will, so that's the maximum number of turnpoints that the IGC recognizes—three. So it's like, it's unofficially the longest, you know? Klaus Allman still has the world record for a three turnpoint, which is 3,008 kilometers. So I've got, I think that's very doable out of here. I was

going to say, if you had a 5 out of a 10 day

that's insane you were in the air for how long? 17 how

much? 40 minutes almost 18 hours all night, all day so yeah it just gets you fired up and do more of this And then I think we can do some big, massive triangles in the way, you know, like 1,500 kilometer, almost 2,000 kilometer triangle flight, you know, run from maybe here down to Inyokern and out towards Ely and then back up towards Minden up to Susanville. And then, you know, so Inyokern, your first turn point, Ely's your second, and then Susanville would be like your third turn point.

And are you working, you know, are you working with Rami? Are you working with a whole bunch of other, Gary down in Albuquerque? are you guys all kind of all working together or this is just your your no

It's just my gig, you know, because that, not like I said, not too many people are, are into this. I mean, some, some people are, still, some people are starting to get a little more interested in it, you know, intrigued with it, with the wave stuff, but not to the extent that, uh, you know, they just, most guys just aren't into that, you know? I mean, most guys go home. There's no way I could sit in a freaking cockpit bit that long, you know? They're just not, they just don't want to. I'm not saying they couldn't, you know, it's just they don't have a desire or will to, right? You know, I get it. That's, that's fine, you know? And it's just nothing, nothing wrong with that, just like they want to go, go to bed and sleep at night. I get it. There's stuff that can be done, you know, try it, you know? And we got the weather here to do it, take advantage of it, so right.

How would you, how would you do it with the three turn point thing? I mean, if you really, if you, um, so what, what's your vision now? What do you, what do you do with this now? It's

Very doable. So the problem we have here in the Sierra, with with waiver kind of in this area, is that we're we're limited with north and south wise with wave, because you get on the southern end of this uh wave area it starts to get too soft and the wave shuts down. If you get too far north, you know, typically will run into moisture, you know, you start getting to that jet jet axis. So whereas like Argentina, they they have a much longer area of mountains, you know, or they can run further north and south and that kind of thing. But I think like with a turn three turn point, um, like Klaus Oman's thing would be take off here, go down to in your current, up to Susanville, back down in your current, and then you'd land up and uh, you know, north of Casper, um, Wyoming, which is uh, which is very very very doable.

So, if you take off here like, like at 10 o'clock at night, and you get these, these legs done in at night in, in a comfortable area geographic, because we're used to this area and we're used to the wave working in this area, and do all that stuff during the night hours, and as the sun comes up, you fly and come up to Minden, and, and then you start hitting off, heading off to the northeast, like what I do going downwind, you know? And then, you know, then you end up, then you end up on a downwind flight, you know, where you, you got that massive tailwind, and you just, if you end up in your like the Casper area, that would put you over the 3,000 kilometer mark, so and

In the, in the sailplane community, is there, there any poo-pooing? Oh no, that's, but these guys are doing it at night, or is there any, is there any friction there? Or is this just the whole community's going? This is badass, this is really cool, right?

Now, I think it's the badass, or you know, uh, category. I don't know where it's going to go in the future. I, I, you know, and what I tell everyone, it's like, you know, whether this is a record, I don't, I can give a rat's ass. You know, it's more of, you know, you're opening up some boundaries, you're exploring new areas, and, and you're utilizing technology and utilizing an air mass, whether it's working day, night, you know, it doesn't matter. You know, for, I gotta go. Well, let's, he's doing it at nighttime. Well, sure, I'm not doing anything illegal, and if they say, well, you can't see a lot of the Europeans, they, the Germans, they cannot, even if they have a glider that's equipped, that's, uh, equipped for night flight, they cannot fly a glider there at night. So all the Europeans think that my flight was not a record because I didn't, you know, a certain number of hours at night, and they, they don't have that luxury that we have.

And I even emailed IGC and the, uh, the IGC folks about it, and the guy goes, "Oh, no." He goes, "You're, as long as you comply with the rules, your country, you're legal to do whatever because you're, you're saying night, that, that would invalidate your flight." He goes, "The fact that you'd use more three turn points does, you know?" So, I mean, I could have used three, you know? So anyway, that, that's that's where we are with that whole thing. But people are very fascinated. I think the Germans, you know, that I did a few test flights at night and I just posted it and just people went nuts like, "What the hell? This guy's flying a glider before this 3,000 kilometer flight even came about." The Germans were calling me, asking for, you know, interviews to, to write articles just about Night Flight, you know, in a glider with night vision goggles, because they were so intrigued.

Tree, by then I'm like, "Holy shit, this is pretty wild. This is like James Bond stuff." And so it is James Bond stuff. So again,

Since I've been following you and watching your pictures and videos, it's just fully James Bond, man. You're 007 out there. It's

It's pretty cool, so it's neat that, you know, I haven't gotten much, uh, I haven't gotten any friction at all. You know, I haven't heard anything, anything negative, you know, whether social media or is this word of mouth, I haven't heard anything like, "Oh, this guy's cheating." Or, I mean, there's—listen, I'm not cool, I'm gonna break any rule. I'm just, I'm doing everything whether people like it or not, I'm just gonna keep doing. I think it's cool, and I think shit

the air mass is

going up at night, use it, you know? And that's what I'm doing, and I've got, uh, luckily, have, uh, the capability to do that. So, but you know, when it, you know, with the with the record thing, I don't know if there's nothing. I mean, if there's a record done, I, I know people need to start looking, you know, because Klaus Olman, I think he was, he's, he saw this nighttime stuff, and I think he's starting to, you know, there's probably some some stuff that he's trying to work on because there was a, I sold Dennis Tito's other arcus and, uh, I got a call from a guy down in Argentina. The guy was, you know, like, uh, I said, "What do you, what do you want to do with a glider?" And he goes, "We're close home, he wants me to buy it." So it's like, you know,

i

Mean, you know what? What he, what he's doing over there over the med and stuff is just so cool, yeah.

Have you heard, have you, uh, heard of Baptiste Innocent, uh, the French guy? He's doing, he was doing that stuff over the med. He did some big, big flights, um, big triangle flights where he, he, He launched from the Alps and then crossed over to, what was the island down there? Madden. Coro. Yeah, then jumped off downwind into Croatia and then flew ridge and thermal, left back to complete China. I did hear about that.

Sorry, I was confusing him with Klaus. But yeah, I mean, it's just, it's remarkable. You know, it's just so cool that, you know, the Red Bull X-Alps, it takes us 12 days to do that whole range and you guys do it in a day. You know, it's really, really awesome. awesome

No, I think, I think what you guys are, that's pretty cool. I'm just sitting on, putting my ass in the seat for 17 hours. You guys are walking, doing all this crap, you know.

Yeah, it's vicious, but it's—it's super inspiring. I really appreciate what you're—you know, you're pressing into, because it's, uh, it's new boundaries. Feels kind of Apollo-ish, man. Yeah, I mean, it feels—it feels, yeah, yeah, it feels that—that you're—you're opening new lines, which is kind of what this thing's been about for a long time. You know, we're trying to find lines that are cool, that are aesthetic, and that are—yeah, yeah, that are pushing the boundaries. One—one—one final question here, just because you know we don't think like you do as pilots when it comes to landing, because we can land anywhere. Um, I know that's not the case with sailplanes, but it's cut. Do you—do you get when—when you've flown as long as you have and you have the experience that you have, does your threshold for safety keep dropping?

Because you know, you you're, I've got the experience. I could figure this out. You know, I'm going for this big distance, or do you really just have to keep a really reasonable, it sounds like you kind of, the margin got a little soft there at the end of that lap, you know, your big one, but.

Yeah, it, it, it does. I think you have to know your own limits. Now, on that big flight, I could have just said, well, I don't want to get my 3,000 kilometers pushed right into the moisture and gone for Alturas and probably not been talking to you right now. But I think there's a point where you do get that limit, and it's funny because that flight, you get to that point, and everyone that's done these big things,

sometimes you get to that point and you go, do I cross that line? You know, if I cross it, I might be paying dearly for this. You know, is this worth it? You know, and you know, and I think my experience in the military and in the airlines, there's a safety aspect that you, you put in there. You go, "This is, nothing's worth this." You know, it's just, it's ridiculous. I don't want to be the guy they go, "What was the guy? That guy was an idiot. What was he thinking?" You know, so I, I mean, there's, there's a certain, you know, I don't want to say I'm, I'm, I'm not, not reckless by any means, but I always, I always have an out. If as long as you have an out, you know, like, okay, well, I can land at that field because Menden's got too big of a crosswind, I'll go downwind. I'll land in Hawthorne into the wind on the runway, you know.

Then, then, then, that's a good. You have to have those options, you know? You have to have those, those alternatives, and if you don't, you don't have an out. Then, it's kind of foolish flying. It's, it's just like flying a glider and just leaving an area of lift and going, okay, I'm going to go for that cloud. And if there's no lift there, there's no place to land, I'm breaking the glider. To me, that's foolish. I just never fly that way, you know, even if I have an engine, because I don't rely on that engine to start. It might not start. So I think I'm fairly safe in my thinking. you know, are you, are you're definitely taking more risk, you know, doing that type of flying than I'm then thermoflying because of the elements you're dealing with. It's just, that's just the nature of the beast, you know, it's just like climbing K2 versus, you know, some other, some smaller peak.

There's just certain, certain amounts of elements of risk you have to put up with, you know, but sure, you know, the safest possible way you can do it, that's the way to do it. So, yeah, yeah, we got to get you down here. I think it'll work.

Gordon, I'm coming, man. If you're sincere about the offer, you just give me a shout. I will come. This has been amazing. Thank you for your time. I told you in the beginning we were going to go for about an hour. We're getting close to two. So excellent. The whiskey's been delicious. You've been incredibly entertaining. And thank you, sir. And I'll be watching you. and I can't wait to see what you do next. Thank you, Gavin. Thanks for your time. Appreciate it. Appreciate it, bud. Nice talking to you. If

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