What luck! The Open Class, 18 Meter, and Sports Class U.S. Gliding Nationals were scheduled to take place late June through early July of this year at the Siskiyou County Airport in Montague, California. That’s only 250 miles south of my home in Corvallis, Oregon, so I knew where I was going to be spending part of my summer! I was mostly interested in attending the Open Class ‘Nats’ because I wanted to see the unlimited ships fly. Because I had only seen pictures of the Nimbus 4 and the ASH-25 in magazines, I felt it would be a real treat seeing a fleet of these planes up close and in competition. And it was! As the owner of a small video production company, I don’t go to any event without my digital video camera in tow. My initial intention was to shoot some footage at the Nationals and then maybe add a small segment to one of our upcoming R/C soaring films. Scale soaring is one of the fastest growing interests within R/C gliding and I thought my fellow flyers would enjoy seeing the real planes in action. However, after burning over 6 hours of video tape during three days of the exciting Open Class competition, I knew I had captured much more than a ten minute sequence for another film. I just HAD to put together a full length feature video about this event and hence the “Going the Distance” project was born. Back in January of this year, I began talking with friend Dean Gradwell, who recently built a hanger at the Siskiyou County Airport to store his new Ventus, a restored KA-6, and a vintage TG-4. I had told Dean that I intended to film the upcoming events and he graciously invited me to come down early and take a flight so I could get some aerial shots of the region and get a feel for the performance of an Open Class ship. So, one week before the Open Class Nationals began, I found myself strapped in an ASH-25 with pilot Mallory Lynch. With my camera in hand and the lift looking good, we were towed up for an afternoon of photo ops and cross country soaring. Mal gave me plenty of stick time and I’ll admit the ASH was more difficult to fly than I had anticipated. I have some hours in various planes like the Grob-103, 2-32, Blanik and such, but nothing as spanny as the ASH. I figured out pitch and roll soon enough but was way ahead of the plane on rudder causing major PIO in yaw, not helped by the fact that my Nikes kept getting jammed in between the pedals and the sides of the fuselage. I flew the last 30 miles back to the airport and we barely lost any altitude. This plane just would not come down, covering ground unlike any plane I had ever experienced. The highlight of the flight was thermaling up 14,000’ snow covered Mt. Shasta, close enough to see blue glacier ice and climber’s foot prints in the snow. The Shasta Valley sits on the Oregon and California border and is a very unique place for soaring. The valley was formed long ago when an ancient volcano collapsed leaving a mess of magma strewn with hills and flats. Siskiyou County airport is a former Cold War jet base. The 8000’ runway is situated right in the middle of valley with a coastal mountain range to the west and desert influenced peaks and valleys to the east. This place is unique in that you often get coastal convergence, monsoon flow, wave lift at Mt. Shasta, and booming thermals coming off the vast belts of dark lava rock all in the same day . The valley itself tends to be a sink hole with lots of north winds in the afternoon to make things even more interesting. After my amazing flight experience in the ASH-25, I was eager to return to Montague for the Open Class Nationals. I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay for the whole 10+ day event, so I tried to pick the best weather periods and luckily chose some of the most exciting days to film. All the folks were super friendly and said they did not mind me poking around their planes with my camera. In fact, most seemed very excited to have someone recording the event. Soaring legend, Ray Gimmey even helped out by explaining the basic contest rules and tasks on camera for us freshman. In 1997, I did have the chance to attend a day of racing at a 15 Meter Nationals, though most of what goes on during these competitions is new to me. Nevertheless, I think I managed to capture the feel of the event very well in this new film. While the racing was very serious amongst the top pilots, the atmosphere was surprisingly low-key. The CD was a little wary of my attempts to get close shots amidst the chaos of the starting grid but she soon forgot about my presence and I did my best not to get run over. I worked most of the runway using my mountain bike to get around, gathering as many shots and angles of the launches as possible. The big open ships, ballasted to the 1653 lb. contest maximum, were slow to get airborne which made for great long telephoto opportunities. Lying on my back in 100 degree heat, I was able to capture the pack thermaling overhead. Filming the fleets landings about 3 hours later was even more exhilarating. Soaring may not be much of a spectator sport, but watching 18 planes come screaming through the finish gate in close order and then seeing them jostle into the pattern is pure heaven for any lover of soaring machines. My first day of shooting included some knuckle biting moments when veteran pilot Heinz Weissenbuehler forgot to put his wheel down during landing and ended up on the gravel runway apron damaging his new Nimbus 4’s belly. By chance, my friend Marcela had filmed the approach and landing from another angle. You can see the whole thing in “Going the Distance”, along with the shot I got of Heinz opening the canopy and looking in disbelief at ground which seemed somehow closer than usual. No worries though. Everyone pitched in to help Heinz disassemble the Nimbus for repairs and he was back in the saddle the very next day. The next morning was picture perfect with Cu’s forming all around the rim of the valley. However, during this mornings weather brief, a cold front was forecast to enter the area by late afternoon. Regardless of the predicted weather, everyone launched into the great lift and headed out for a 220 mile task. Around 4pm the wind shifted to an unusual south west direction and by 5pm it was blowing 20 to 30 kts directly cross runway. Balls of freshly mowed alfalfa tumbled across the airfield and the ground crews and contest volunteers started getting worried. Landing gliders with ninety foot spans in anything but a light cross wind is not recommended. The airport has a small cross wind runway on the other side of the field but conditions there were also a bit crossed and downhill as well. Some of the first pilots in chose this runway and landed without incident, though the landings were far from easy. The most experienced pilots picked the 150’ wide main runway for landing. The trick was to come in extra hot and crossed up, then once down, straighten with hard rudder. I was able to get incredible footage of these pilots wrestling their planes down safely. You know its cross wind when the last of the water ballast is blowing from wing root to tip! The landing sequences on this day alone are worth the price of the video. Unfortunately, one Nimbus 3 pilot was caught by a huge gust which got under one wing and it flipped him inverted into the dirt demolishing the plane and sending him to the hospital. Using my better judgement, I decided not to include any shots of this accident in “Going the Distance”, but if your curious, I did put a few shots of the damaged Nimbus on the Gallery page of my website, www.radiocarbonart.com. A lay day was coming up and I had run out of digital tapes, so it was back to Corvallis. Because I had so much fun at the Open Class event, I went back again for a few more days of filming at the 18 Meter and Sports Class ‘Nats’, but that is another article all together. Some footage of this event are also included in the video. I then spent the next 3 weeks working around the clock on my Macintosh editing and assembling the best of the best footage together. With the addition of music from some of the best young film composers off the Spotted Peccary music label, “Going the Distance” came together. There have been so few films on soaring in the past, probably because of the high production costs versus a small customer market; but now, digital video has made high quality filming and editing affordable, allowing for small niche interest films like ours to be produced. You can help support this and future products with a purchase of this great new soaring film “Going the Distance”. Please explore our website to see more preview pictures from this video and to purchase your copy through our secure online store. We offer this high quality video in both US NTSC and European PAL VHS video formats. We guarantee you will be glad to have this video as part of your collection or your money back. I have watched it over 50 times and I never get tired of seeing that Nimbus 4 blasting overhead at 140 knots with multiple vapor trails gleaming in the afternoon sunlight. Paul Naton Radio Carbon Art