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Soaring Over Frankfort
By Dave Mull |
 I'll never look at buzzards the same way again. Black, bald-headed carrion-eaters though they may be, they're masters of effortless flight, of catching thermals rising high in the sky.
"Look at that, ain't they beautiful?" remarks 80-year-old Stollie Larson, as we sit on picnic tables next to a grassy landing strip at the Frankfort, Michigan airport. About a dozen turkey vultures make fast, tight circles against a cloudy sky, never beating a wing. "Look how high they are now! They really found something!" adds Dave Harden, age 76, moments later, and Stollie, following Harden's gaze exclaims "C'mon Mike, let's go flying!"
Mike Stimac is a commercial real estate developer and, in his 40s, the youngest among the members of the Northwest Soaring Club assembled this August afternoon. Avid windsurfer, stunt pilot and hang glider, this day he is going to take a few practice glides in a 400-pound aluminum Blanik two-seater glider, before taking a writer from Lakeland Boating aloft.
"I've been flying a glider since 1982, but this year I've been towing more than gliding and I just want to reacquaint myself before taking you," he explains. This is fine, as my main objective for showing up is to get pictures of sailplanes to accompany a story about the Lake Michigan port of Frankfort, which has a long history as a destination for non-powered flyers. That the club members want me to experience the flight itself is an unexpected, though admittedly much hoped-for, bonus. I've wanted to fly in a glider since watching a Disney movie about soaring with condors as a kid.
Stollie fires up the single-engine Bellanca Scout and tows Mike and Dave Harden aloft, letting me snap away with my digital camera on each of three take-offs and landings, positioning myself far down the runway. As I watch the big, white aircraft making a wide oval well out from the landing strip, I marvel at how it seems like it's barely moving, silent, unexpectedly big-looking from a distance.
 Finally it's my turn, and as I walk down the runway to where the glider and tow plane await, my mind starts to over-think the situation. Mike has already told me that the east wind is no concern as the glider can "outfly" it and won't be pushed out to the middle of Lake Michigan. I'll take his word for that. But I wonder if he's considered that I must outweigh the wiry Dave Harden by a good 100 pounds. How well will we stay aloft?
Pushing these thoughts aside, I climb into the rear seat. When you sit in a sailplane, you sort of wear it. The back part of the canopy as it's tightened down touches my ball cap. Both of my upper arms lightly press against the sides of the cockpits and I have to slightly twist my ankles so my feet don't rest on the tail rudder control pedals. I have to pull my left arm in or it gets in the way of the air-brake lever, which lifts flaps on top of the long wings and slows the glider down for landing.
"This is the movement I'll need in the stick," says Mike, moving his joystick, which also moves the rear one. I have to press my knees farther outward to keep my legs out of the way.
Still, the seat isn't unduly uncomfortable, and excitement takes over as Stollie roars down the slightly bumpy grass runway (the sailplanes opt for grass to save wingtips rubbing on the airport's concrete strip upon landing) and we're quickly aloft, airspeed of 55 mph, following the yellow plane.
"The idea here is keep yourself level behind the towplane, grab the stick for a moment and you can see the movements I'm making to do that," Mike says.
We make long, lazy circles behind the tow plane, each one taking us about a thousand feet higher. Mike has to manipulate the stick fairly constantly to keep us directly behind Stollie.
"Go ahead and take us to four thousand feet," Mike says over the radio.
"Four thousand feet. Roger," comes Stollie's voice. Mike is pointing out some cloud formations and explaining how they can show where warm air currents are coming from below - the main thing glider pilots want for staying aloft. Stollie's voice comes over the radio again. "Mike, I'm gonna go around one more time and get you to four thousand."
 "OK, we'll just follow you," responds Mike with what surely must be an ancient joke between glider pilots and those who tow them.
"Dave, you see that yellow handle on your left?" Mike says as the altimeter creeps higher. "When I say so, pull it and that will release the towrope."
When Mike says the word I pull the handle back, and with a soft "clunk" noise, we bank right and the towplane banks left. The reality of being 4,000 feet in the air, encased in 400 pounds of aluminum and Plexiglas, is a memory that will bring a lump to my throat for years to come. Sure, it's a little scary, but it's indescribably exciting.
"This is the coolest thing I've ever done!" I exclaim. I can't see his face, but I know Mike is smiling.
As we soar around the circumference of greater Frankfort, Mike points out the various lakes, and I note the incredible clarity of Crystal Lake.
"Airspeed says just 45 miles per hour," I remark, thinking if I've ever gone this slow above the ground.
"Let me see if I can slow us down even more," Mike says, raising the nose slightly. Sure enough, we get to 35 miles per hour. That was slow, but on my next flight, I was going to learn what it's like to completely stop a glider.
"Let's go look at your boat," Mike says, banking towards Betsie Bay, and sure enough I can spot the 30-foot Dorado I'd crossed Lake Michigan in the day before, tied in Jacobson's Marina.
"See that beach?" Mike says, banking to bring the white sands of Frankfort's sister village, Elberta into view. "That's the most beautiful beach I've ever seen, not a rock on it, and I've seen some beaches around the world."
 "That platform there you can see at the top of the dune is where hang-gliders take off from," he says. "I'd like you to try that sometime, too."
For now, this is more than enough powerless flight for me, and after catching a few thermals, hard to find on a cloudy day when the sun isn't directly hitting the landscape below, we come down to a thousand feet.
"Time to think about landing," says Mike, bringing the glider in a wide arc and lining up with the landing strip.
Soon we're on the ground, but my adventure is, surprise, surprise, far from over.
"I really think you should fly with one of the senior club members," Mike says after we've climbed out of the cockpit. "Dudley there flew in World War II."
I meet Dudley Whitman as he sits in the driver seat of his hunter green, 1967 Mustang sports coupe, eating a bologna sandwich and sipping a Coke from an 8-ounce can. He later tells me he's had the car since the day it was new, and it still looks like it just came off the lot.
Dudley is a native Floridian ("I remember Miami Beach when it was so small everyone knew each other") who now splits time between Frankfort and the Bahamas. ("I worked my whole life so I could spend summers away from Florida.") He has a twinkle in his eye and is quick with comebacks to his younger buddy Charlie, also a WWII veteran and soaring club member, as they bandy good-natured barbs. Dudley is 85; Charlie is 81.
Stollie lands the Blanik with a young gal who has taken a "booster" ride. (Mike explained earlier that the club doesn't sell rides, but you can join as a booster for a day, which includes a flight to 2000 feet, for $75. A daily club membership for $135 gets you to 5,000 feet. All proceeds go to glider and towplane storage and maintenance.) Now it's Dudley and me, with Charlie as the wingman to hold the glider level as Stollie prepares to take us aloft. (It occurs to me that with the three guys' combined ages here, I've got almost 250 years, a quarter of a millennium, helping out on this flight.) At 4,000 feet, Dudley pulls the release, and we're once again banking right as Stollie banks left.
"Have you flown much Dave?" he shouts back to me as I settle in and start to enjoy what I expect to be another fun, but fairly uneventful, ride.
"Not really," I say.
"This is what we call a 'stall,'" he says, pulling the nose of the airplane upward. "We do this when we start to get ready to land."
Looking at Dudley's green ballcap, with wisps of gray sticking out over his ears, my mind quickly blazes through all the aviation movies I've ever seen and I recall seeing "stalls" that cause planes to plummet out of control, spinning tail first towards earth. Such wasn't he case with the glider in Dudley's experienced hands.
"To get out of it we just point the nose downwards," and pushing the joystick forward, we start an easy dive.
 "That wasn't a real good one, let me try that again," he says. Of course my mind is still stuck on planes spinning out of control as the plane once again comes to what seems a complete stop.
"Did you feel that shudder?" he asks. I have indeed felt it, and am tempted to tell Dudley that I thought it was me, fouling my underwear. Once again we dive towards earth, this time, green trees filling my forward vision. We come out of it easily and Dudley heads out over Lake Michigan, farther than I remember Mike going. I can't help thinking about that east wind again and what Mike meant that the glider could out-fly it. (Sometime during the flight I also wonder if Dudley would chance the ultimate practical joke and fake a heart attack).
"Let's see, can we see Wisconsin?" he asks. Sure enough, some 50 miles away, there are dark humps of land barely visible on the western horizon.
"Did you catch some thermals with Mike?"
I say we did, and with the sun now out and creating a few more, Dudley puts the aircraft into a tight circle, mimicking the vultures we'd seen earlier, allowing the warm air to keep us at the same altitude.
I want to ask Dudley about flying in WWII, but part of me fears he might have some sort of combat flashback and I really don't want the feisty guy to show me how he outflew a Messerschmidt or something. The ride is over too soon, and back on the ground, Stollie offers a hand to help Dudley out of the glider's front seat. Dudley waves it off.
"This is like surfing," he says, and it's no stretch to think that Dudley may still spend some time hanging-ten. "If you can't carry your own surfboard, then you're probably too young or too old to surf."
"If I can't get out of this thing by myself, then I probably shouldn't be in it in the first place," and with a quick push, he lands with both feet on solid ground.
The Northwest Soaring Club flies almost any day the weather is conducive to flying a glider. Members happily provide transportation to the nearby airport for boaters who want to join as a booster for a day and go soaring. For a recorded message about the club's flights, call 231-352-9160 or contact Dave Harden at 231-352-6123.
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