Radio Control Slope Soaring
Dave Garwood [[email protected]]
The author flies Point Fermin in San Pedro, California
I GOT THE opportunity to fly at Point Fermin the day before the Southern California Power Slope Scale (PSS) Festival this past May. Luckily I've been able to fly there maybe five times in the last 10 years, and this column will contain an account of a mellow West Coast flying session.
Point Fermin is located in the town of San Pedro on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, roughly 15 miles south of the Los Angeles International Airport. It is a legendary site for half-pipe extreme slope flying.
The pilots who fly there know what they're doing and fly some of the heaviest sailplanes in Slope Soaring, with wing loadings reaching and exceeding 50 ounces per square foot of wing area. In addition to more common sailplanes, the purpose-built Fermin gliders are big, heavy, and slippery, typically loaded to approximately 35 ounces per square foot.
The explanation for the heavy aircraft is speed and their ability to carry energy for half-pipe pumps and other big-sky aerial-ballet maneuvers. The reason for flying this site is the quality of the lift.
The 15 mph winds at Fermin produce as much lift as 30 mph winds do at most other slope-flying sites. Sometimes a model in the paddock here is heavy enough to feel like it's machined from a billet of aluminum. Maybe even tungsten.
The flying site is a city park with closely mowed grass, plenty of flowers, and well-cared-for trees. This is a sublimely pleasant place to spend an afternoon. However, looking over the 160-foot escarpment and thinking of tossing a sailplane off can be intimidating.
When I looked downward for the first time, I could imagine seeing shipwrecks below, and there's no obvious or easy route to take to recover a downed airplane. It can make you wait until someone else launches and tests the lift; the Utah fliers term the stalwart first pilot to throw off the "Wind Dummy."
The good news is that the lift is superb—strong enough to support fast, heavy airplanes. It's smooth, too; with the Pacific Ocean out front, there are no upwind obstacles to make turbulence. The huge lift lets you fly fast and far, and it gives great energy for half-pipe pumps.
The wind is generally reliable at this venue. The sun heats the land and draws air in from the ocean, creating a daily sea breeze that turns on almost every afternoon by 1:00 or 2:00 in the summer and slightly earlier in the winter. That is, unless it is disturbed by a synoptic weather system—say, a storm at sea or a strong high-pressure system just inland.
Half-pipes are passes close in front with stall turns on both ends of the pattern. It's the trademark maneuver for these SoCal Iron Horse fliers, and it's most often done as a group exercise, with two or more airplanes flying the pattern in formation, also called a "Slope Scale Party" or "Der Schwarm." The better the lift, the higher the ballistic "pumps" on the ends of the maneuver.
I've flown with as many as 10 pilots in a half-pipe group, and this is generally an intense, adrenalin-filled flying session. As long as those in the group fly their models together in the same direction, all is generally well.
When there is paint-swapping contact between sailplanes, a flight path may be upset, but both can generally recover without a crash.
RC Slope Soaring
Dave Garwood
Occasionally an elevator or an aileron will become disabled and a model will go down, or at least gets tricky to land, but hey! No guts, no glory.
The horror show of a midair collision happens when someone gets out of the pattern and flies opposite the pack, and a pair of fast, heavy sailplanes collide head-on. It's as close as we get to a train wreck in soaring.
Landing is another matter to be reckoned with. The landing zone (LZ) is across a four-lane street inside a chain-link fence, surrounded by palm trees and containing a concrete World War II coastal-defense gun emplacement. I should also mention that some of the grass that was here years ago has been replaced with asphalt.
As usual, there are plenty of ways a landing can go wrong, but eventually a flight must end. If you've landed Slope Soarers precisely before, and if you watch the local fliers shoot a few landings, you'll be able to do it. At least the rotor is not a major factor here; the LZ is far enough away from the tip to act like a thermal field rather than produce the rough turbulent conditions we sometimes see just back from the edge.
On my first landing at Fermin, in the early 1990s, I was awarded my Slope-flier radio call sign name. The downwind leg was picture-perfect and the crosswind leg was acceptable, but the final was hot. Very hot. Trying to get the fiberglass sailplane on the ground before it smacked into the fence, I caught a wingtip and cartwheeled across the field dramatically.
Now you know why they call me "Garwheel." Real radio call sign names are bestowed by your flying buddies—not self-conferred.
There's a secret you might not guess about the tough-guy Sierra Hotel fliers who frequent Point Fermin: if you ask for help on your landing, you'll probably get it. Even the gnarliest Slope dudes are happy to see others join in and advance through the ranks of extreme fliers.
On this sunny, medium-lift day, foam and fiberglass models were flown. And because this was a prelude to the PSS Festival, we flew with local and out-of-town pilots.
The Southern California fliers present included Alfred Orozco (San Pedro CA) flying scratch-built, purpose-designed gliders ("Fermin Planes"); Brian Laird ("Mr. Slope Scale," Moreno Valley CA) flying his Composite Systems Development (CSD) P-51 Mustang, Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star, and Bell P-39 Airacobra; and Steve Gherardi (Palos Verdes CA) flying a fast Genesis.
Also Joe Krosner (Lake Forest CA) flying a 72-inch-span Leading Edge Gliders (LEG) Bell P-63 Kingcobra; John Phan (Lakewood CA) with original-design flying wings in fiberglass and foam; Kevin Wilson (Glendale CA) flying an original-design EPP-foam Bell P-59 Airacomet; and Tim Neja (Lake Forest CA) with a large-scale, original-design MiG-3, a CSD Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star, and a fiberglass original-design Kawasaki Ki-61 Hein.
Pilots down from Northern California were Paul Masura (Livermore CA) tearing up the sky with his fiberglass CSD BD-5 Slope jet and Reed Sherman (San Francisco CA) working out with a heavy CSD Bell P-39 Airacobra.
Traveling from other states were Brian Courtice (Napili HI) flying a good-looking, large-span LEG P-51 Mustang; Greg Smith ("Mr. SlopeFlyer.com," Milwaukee WI) flying models he imports, including the Pixel, the Erwin 5, and the Gap; and Jack Cooper ("Mr. Leading Edge Gliders," Lucas KS) with a Turbo Legend and his own-design LEG EPP-foam Jack Rabbit racer.
Also Joe Chovan (Syracuse NY) flying his own-design EPP-foam Messerschmitt Me 109 foamy warbird racer and a Slope Scale P-80; and John Root (Boston MA) working hard behind the camera. I flew an old-model Slope Scale P-51 Mustang and an early-version Super Toucan (an Inland Slope Rebels club-project design), which I keep hangared out west to save shipping costs for the times I do get to travel to fly in Gilderland.
To get to the Point Fermin site, take I-405 to Torrance, then I-110 to San Pedro. Exit at South Gaffey Street and follow it to Angel's Gate Park. For refreshments, there's a small store by the Busy Bee Market at 2413 South Walker Avenue in San Pedro.
The next couple of Slope Soaring columns will cover flying in Washington and Kansas. By now you probably know how I feel about traveling to fly Slope: just do it! MA
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
