After arriving on the island, I tried again. I spoke with a local instructor, Scotty, who said the only flying was in Kealakekua Bay. That was a problem for me. Kealakekua Bay was two hours away by car. I had no car. I really didn't want to buy a car because my time in Hawaii was to be a brief five months. I search for junkers, but finding a vehicle on the Island was difficult. That is, until a co-worker gave me a number of his friend. In the end I bought a 1991 Ford Explorer 4x4 for $900. It ran fine. Mostly.
On my 4th weekend on the Big Island, I was Kealakekua bound for the first time. I met Scotty face-to-face and he gave me site intro. All the landing zones were classified as restricted. Restricted, really, was a euphemism. Even at the most forgiving LZ you only got one chance to land once you committed and you had to commit well before you final leg of approach. This gave the air lots of opportunities to raise or drop before landing. Landing too early or too late meant power lines, trees, or bees. The area to land sloped down in the direction of the prominent wind direction at a gradient steeper than any modern glider's glide ratio. For these reasons, any flying on the Big Island was P3 or higher only. I was intimidated, but I knew that it was either fly here or not fly on the island. I told Scott I could do it. I had doubts. As bad as the LZs in Kealakekua are, the launch is good. It's wide, grassy, gently sloping, and without too much rotor producing objects. I knew launching would be no problem.
So I launched early in the morning to avoid any thermic activity. I knew I was in for a 7 minute sledder. I spent half that time following the procedure for the main LZ approach. I came down almost too early and dropped the glider in a bunch of coffee plants. Moku, another local pilot, watched my landing. He wasn't impressed, but it wasn't bad enough to get me kicked out.
I've flown just about every weekend I could have in Kealakekua since and am still counting. In doing so, I have more flights and hours flown over Kealakekua than at another site. More importantly, I have learned to thermal. Kealakekua is only thermic. There's no ridge lift. That's right. Remember my great enemy at Pine Mountain and Woodrat? It's been a learning process, but I've had a flew flights over an hour now, which I consider an accomplishment. Even though most flights are somewhere between 20-30 minutes, I still have a blast. Just writing that puts it all into perspective. Less than a year ago, a 20-30 minute flight would have been akin to a miracle. Now it's average.
Learning to thermal was surprisingly easier than I thought it would be, grant it sometimes you don't find anything and you just sink out. Figuring out efficient turning and what good lift feels like is easy. The hard part was just increasing my tolerance to turbulence - being OK with getting knocked around in the air. When you are hundreds or thousands of feet in the sky and your glider is getting thrashed around, taking deflations, and generally just misbehaving, it's pretty damn unsettling. Even with SIV training, I found myself (unnecessarily) scared at many points. However, I made it a point to keep launching into stronger and stronger air. Somewhere between last September and now, I started flying mid-day. I have learned to embrace "the bump" as it's called. I learned that high pressure days meant smaller, stronger thermals than low pressure days. Thermals I once thought too small to use, I learned to core into. The complicated landing zone has become almost routine. Almost because the LZ also happens to be one of the most thermically active surfaces in the area. You can ALWAYS expect a good 50-100 foot kick, if not more coming in. That said, sometimes the kick doesn't happen, but you need to be ready for anything. That means coming in on a final that will put you where you will want to be without lift but also a final that will let you bleed out an extra 200-300 feet if things go crazy and things do go crazy. Here is video is from my first four weeks of Kealakekua flying.
One day I found myself in 1400+ foot per minute lift with comparable sink. My poor wing was taking collapses all over the place. One collapse was 70-80% of my wing. Given that it was my third week at Kealakekua, my brain was in crisis mode (not to be confused with panic). I used spirals to get down, but it still took me a long time because every time I would exit the spiral, the lift would suck me back up several hundred feet. It was a day I kissed the ground after landing. In hindsight, I should have stayed airborne and just rode things out another hour or two until the lift calmed down with the setting sun.
Did I improve those landings? Did I become a thermal pilot? I can answer unequivocally 'yes' to both these questions, but I was still a P2, a subject I discussed with Scotty when I met him, but I told him I was an advanced P2. This was true. I had over 25 hours, 100 flights, and experience in wide range of mellow conditions. Kealakekua was the place to grow. If Oregon had been my cradle for flying, Kealakekua is my playground. After observing my good landings, honestly my landings have become something I am proud of, my budding thermaling skills, and giving me a little exam, Scotty and Chris, another instructor, gave me my P3 license. Ellis had commented once long before that if I could just stay alive long enough, I would turn into a decent pilot. I think that's true now.
Fall turned to winter in Hawaii and flying conditions improved as they usually do in Kealakekua. The days became sunnier and nights cooler - a recipe for good flying. Here is a video of the early winter flying there.
That's it. That's a quick summary of everything to the present. From here on out it's current.
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