CERTAIN SIGNS
On a typical sunny wave day we were chugging along with nearly our whole fleet in the air when the wind went full on nuts. It happened while I was at the east end, babysitting the only glider that wasn't up. The first sign was a dust devil over the farm south of Bob's Gap. Hmm. Never seen one there before (or ever again in the ten years since). A couple minutes later another devil sprouted on the First Ridge! Ditto.
Then the crosswind surged from gusty to solid and redoubled. Blowing sand from the dirt strip made it hard to keep my eyes open. I hopped in the cockpit and pulled spoilers with one hand while locking the canopy with the other. After that it was 'fly the aircraft' into blasts of blowing dust (airspeed forty to sixty) while all the other birds fought their way down and in.
Those anomalous devils marked an interface beyond which actual wave flow was touching down at the surface, and I'd failed to recognize their significance even as the whole business was marching at us. The first devil was about three miles upwind, the second half that, and five minutes after the first, the gale hit home.
Straight across the runway.
The first glider to land weathervaned off to the midfield fence. Its occupants stayed in to keep her on the ground while folks held both wingtips and the tail, 'flying' the bird as they walked it backward to its tiedown. Meanwhile the next landing weathervaned to that same spot and before help could come another glider stopped beside it. Again everyone remained aboard and on the controls until their craft was secured, then rushed to help the next arrival.
Because the glider I occupied was least valuable, it would be the last one rescued. Glad it wasn't hot, for there was no choice but to ride this out, vents closed against the dust for about an hour while everybody else reaped the veritable wind. All subsequent landings copped wise and used the crosswind strip, which brought the action closer to where I waited, still flying my grounded glider. Strange, feeling the urge to run and help but knowing I had to sit tight.
Many times both wingtips were obscured by blowing sand. During one such kickup a tall ominous figure emerged from the brown fog, a pilot friend of many years. Leaning against the wind like Ichabod Crane, he came within eyeshot and stopped. Standing in front of an aircraft actually in flight made him crouch, uneasy. By himself he couldn't do anything for me, and I had nothing to say that wasn't hugely obvious, so we both shrugged, he raised a hand in half salute, then kept it there to shelter his eyes and staggered away in the storm.
That left plenty of time for wierd daydreams and ghastly imaginings. Forty to sixty meant I could close spoilers, nose up and be airborne at any time – moving backward that is! If a lunatic tried to actually climb away from this position, it might even work one time in a hundred, but all other attempts would end in low speed crashes of one kind or another, many inverted. Soon there wouldn't be much glider left. So no, every time the roar increased I pulled harder on the spoiler handle and pushed harder on the stick
And eventually thought of the safety harness. Did I want it on, or maybe not? Feeling naked, it took a while but I managed to secure the lap belt while never letting go of the stick. Shoulder straps? Screw it. Low speed crash, is that a promise?
Oh, and the tow plane needed to land too. Gliders' right-of-way delayed several attempts, and the whole airport periodically disappearing in dust required so many go-arounds, I began to wonder about remaining fuel. When finally it did get wheels on the ground, the roll-out was fifty feet or so. From there as with the gliders, crew held both wingtips and the tail as they taxied under power slowly to the tiedown.
Ultimately the wave trough migrated further downwind and our surface conditions 'moderated' as they always do. By then though, no one was in a mood to fly. Sand was everything, between teeth and inside clothes. All the aircraft were grimy, paint jobs defaced, and canopies had aged years since morning.
Before sundown a classic lenticular sat over Palmdale, no surprise. What made news was its height. Palmdale is six hundred feet lower than Crystal, and from fifteen miles away we were seeing that cloud's leading edge at eye level! Wave was touching down upwind of there as it had here. Good time to shop for free lawn furniture tumbling up the street.
When I drove away that evening my car had a horrendous shimmy and I stopped to see why. Sand was packed into wind-facing voids on all four wheels, causing extreme imbalance. A mile at highway speed and the shimmy was gone, but a foggy gray tint on the windshield I never could polish out.