KEPH XC Camp ’24

Hood River Soaring teamed up with the SSA and SGC to host a national junior cross-country development academy to be held at Ephrata the first week of July 2024. Despite a number of mentor pilots having been onsite as contestants at the prior week’s Region 8 Contest, they were ready and willing to stay and participate in this inaugural event for the Pacific Northwest.

The SSA sponsors up to two junior cross-country camps each year by subsidizing a week’s worth of tows for mentored and solo flights by each qualifying junior, and we were honored to be allowed to host one of those camps at Ephrata this year. To ensure that attending juniors would take the camp seriously and make the most progress during the event, I imposed a number of prerequisites besides SSA membership: registration was limited to post-solo (licensed or not) juniors under the age of 26, and with a couple of very minor exceptions for particularly dedicated juniors, they were required to hold A, B, and C badges as well as to pass the Bronze Badge written test and Bronze Badge SSA-attended covered-altimeter and spot landing tasks. Many of them diligently worked on completing these up until the week before camp.

With the surprise revelation of the new no-camping policy at the Ephrata airport after I had already spent over a hundred hours planning and publicizing this camp, I scrambled for some time trying to come up with an alternative plan to house these 11 juniors and their chaperones. A farm, a school, a church lawn, a campground, perhaps? Just the prospect of ferrying everyone back and forth between the airport and anywhere else seemed virtually insurmountable. But with only three weeks to go before camp, Mike Bamberg found the solution when he made contact with local Civil Air Patrol leadership. Squadron Deputy Commander Roger Patry stepped up alongside David Maxwell, Director of Logistics, to offer their 68-bunk barracks right there at the Camp Robert L. Boucher facility just across the parking lot from the SGC training center. We hope to have CAP cadets join us some future cross-country camp. (Side note: although you may not have known Roger’s name previously, he is a long-term benefactor of many of you and other SGC pilots that have availed themselves of the opportunity to land out safely at the airstrip next to his home; he is the owner and resident of the haven we all know so well as Beezley Hills. And although it is certainly dusty, it is not, in fact, a duster strip, but Roger’s private airstrip.)

This was truly a national-caliber event that attracted juniors from around the country. Of the 11 juniors attending, only four were local to Hood River Soaring; of the rest, two were from other northwest clubs, and the other five were from around the nation: Massachusetts, Virginia, Florida, Missouri, and Arizona. Age ranged from 15-year-old students to 17-year-old glider-rated students to 20-year-old CFII Katia Van Horn from Missouri, 24-year-old marine aviator-in-training Matt Catanoso from Pensacola, and 21-year-old CFIG Jack Stoffel from Massachusetts, First Officer with Frontier Airlines. Juniors would be paired up for the week, and each pair would rotate from mentor to mentor, dual ship to dual ship, day to day so that each junior had an opportunity to fly with each mentor. Each dual ship was scheduled to fly twice per day; one junior would be on ground crew in the morning while the other flew with the day’s mentor. After all were launched, the morning crew took to monitoring the radio to listen for their partner returning, whereupon there was a quick change of roles, with the morning junior pilots stepping into ground crew duty as their partners took the afternoon flight with the mentors.

Arrival day, Sunday, June 30, got off with a bang when—just as the juniors were arriving—Dan Canfield and Alex Winbow graciously proffered juniors the opportunity to participate in landout retrieves at Beezley Hills and Lake Lenore (airstrip, not the lake itself!), respectively.

Following those and a rather foreshortened late-evening orientation meeting, the juniors retired to their quarters in the Civil Air Patrol’s 68-bunk facility just across the parking lot. But alas, the respite was all too short; with no bevy of volunteers from a local glider club, each junior was assigned breakfast duty alternating days. So for half of them, Monday morning began at 06:30 in the kitchen. With Candida Hart and Erin Gossett ably managing the kitchen and this conscripted help, everyone was treated to delicious breakfasts each day.

(Now, the juniors did defeat our best efforts to limit the sugar highs during the week; it was not until midweek that we discovered that the CAP building had its own refrigerator—and that the juniors had quickly stocked it with ice cream and Oreos and were enjoying their own rather benign late-night parties after each evening’s training sessions came to a close. Yet there they were, for the most part, jumping back into KP duty at 06:30 for breakfast the next morning.)

But breakfast was more than just KP duty and food. This was a holistic experience in which pairs of juniors were assigned to their mentor-of-the-day from breakfast onward for the rest of the day. So breakfast consisted largely of threesomes—mentor and the two juniors of the day—engrossed in glider-specific, instrumentation, skill and experience assessments, and other preparations for the day’s flights.

Following breakfast cleanup, we rearranged furniture in the SGC training facility to listen and watch attentively Noel Wade’s germane and fascinating analysis of the soaring weather of the day. For those of you that have seen Noel in action, you already know what a treat this is. But we had something extra special in store for these juniors. The morning sessions were intended not only to inform mentors and juniors regarding possible tasks for the day; this was Weather Training 201 for aspiring young cross-country glider pilots. So we got to watch Noel’s entire weather data collection and interpretation process from the Skew-T, SkySight, and various other raw-data and prognostics charts all the way through to the interpretation regarding potential and recommended task areas and lengths.

Now, on the first day, Noel’s conclusion went something like this, “Even though we have pretty good conditions today, let’s take this first day to familiarize juniors with the local area and assess their skills.” After attendees making their own lunches, we all head out to the flight line for the first round of launches.

Noel’s advice apparently wore off rather quickly; what nobody had considered was the fact that all five mentors were not merely cross-country pilots, but experienced contest pilots. So there was nothing introductory or local about the day. Instead, the favored destination was apparently Timbuctoo, given that the first round of launches departed for cross-country flights of up to 150 miles, with all that area familiarization, thermaling technique, and speed-to-fly instruction rolled up into contest-like flights. That continued with additional long flights in the second round later in the afternoon.

The days inevitably brought smiles to the faces of mentors and mentees alike.

Following the afternoon launches, the afternoon ground crew transitioned from launch crew to dinner crew. So by the time the afternoon flights returned each day, dinner preparations were well underway. And it was not typical camp food. Sure, there was a pasta night—but, then, what other camp has vodka pesto and shrimp alfredo? And how about the Indian meal Tuesday night—dal, naan, chicken/chickpea korma, and even sweet potato halwa for dessert? Thursday’s dinner was Thai food: swimming rama, red curry, and deep-fried sweet potato balls. There was even a grill-your-own night with banana splits for dessert. After dinner cleanup each night, the room was again rearranged for the evening training session.

Mike Bamberg did a presentation on blue-day thermaling, Sean Franke did an evening on speed to fly, and—with a live example in hand—there was an evening on badges and records. Midweek, on Independence Day, Junior Katia Van Horn, remote member of HRS, headed off in the HRS L-33 for what turned out to be a Silver Altitude & Distance flight past Mansfield and back—a flight that also qualified as a Kolstad Century I and established 10 Washington female state records. So we took that .igc file, and with visit to various badge and record rules and procedures sites, got all of those badges and records filed with Rollin. After that night’s session, most of us made the 75-minute drive up to Grand Coulee Dam to watch the fireworks.

There were other high points during the week, including a number of gliders being under-flown by a pair of C17s on an MTR.

During this week, tow pilots Jim Dobberfuhl and 17-year-old Jonathan Hart both did double-duty. When one of the adult mentors had to leave midweek, Jonathan continued to alternate with Jim as tow pilot for the first couple of tows apiece each day, after which he stepped into the ASK-21 as mentor pilot, leaving Jim to do the rest of the tows for the day. And this is how we get here: a mentor/mentee, cumulative age 32 years of age.

By Friday, exhaustion was mounting for some, and providentially poor soaring weather, combined with smoke from distant fires, combined to justify the decision to make this day a rest day—at least a rest from flying. In reality juniors and mentors alike headed out to various local hiking and swimming/boating destinations for some relaxation before gearing up again for Saturday’s finale.

The L-33 did two more badge flights on Saturday, the last day of camp: Fox Gossett completed Silver Altitude & Distance and Century I, and 15-year-old Isabel Ulland completed her Silver Altitude. Jonathan and Matt Catanoso landed out at Electric City, giving us all another opportunity to assist with the retrieve and get the ASK-21 packed up for the trip home the next day—and a bonus opportunity for a chance to talk to the crew and get a close-up look at this fire-fighting Blackhawk stationed there.

After a celebration dinner that night, cleanup of the CAP and SGC facilities and breakfast the next morning, everyone headed for home. And the SSA wants use to do it again next year.

Planning and executing this camp was a herculean effort on the part of many people. There are probably those that I have forgotten, but special thanks go to at least all of these folks:

• Dual-ship mentors
  • Mike Bamberg, Dan Canfield, and Alex Winbow in the WVSC Grob 103. Many thanks to all at Willamette who put forth the effort to get this ship ready and transported to/from the event
  • Noel Wade with his Duo Discus
  • Charlie Longley and Garrett McEwan in Evergreen’s DG1000
  • Mark Stanfield and Jonathan Hart in the HRS ASK-21
  • Sean Franke in his Twin Shark—dubbed “the spaceship” by some attending juniors
  • Single-ship lead-and-follow mentor James Swank
  • Jeff Banks stepped in the last day as instructor to brief and oversee 15-year-old Isabel Ulland in preparation for her Silver Altitude flight in the L33.
  • Tim Mitchell attended with his son Gus and immediately stepped in as de facto field manager so I could focus on directing the camp and getting in some flights in the Ximango
  • Justin Ulland led the convoy from Hood River that brought the ASK-21 and L33, and he also led retrieval team at Electric City.
  • Austin Franke attended with his father and being an invaluable asset on the ground crew. Austin has since soloed at Williams and hopes to attend next year’s event as full registrant.