The challenge was to glide — of course for the first time — in a huge circle route round the western half of the Kingdom — and to record the trip.
Gliding looks deceptively simple: In principle it is; birds do it all the time. It is, however, a very different prospect when the terrain beneath the slender 23- meter wings of the three Stemme S10 gliders is as hostile as the arid wastes of Saudi Arabia and the gliders are burdened with a load of heavy and complex recording equipment.
The idea came from Prince Bandar ibn Khaled who, having taken up gliding in 2004 in Europe, was keen to fly over Saudi Arabia. With the founding of the Saudi Aviation Club by Prince Sultan ibn Salman, the idea gained added impetus. His ambition is to bring recreational flying to the Kingdom, open the sport to all and provide young Saudis with a both adventures and challenges. As recreational flying is new to the Kingdom, the flight was also an opportunity to accustom air traffic controllers to what — for them — was a new set of challenges.
At the beginning of 2005, the idea took shape as a real possibility when Prince Sultan, a widely qualified pilot and a gliding enthusiast, brought his enthusiasm for all things aeronautical plus the weight of the Supreme Commission for Tourism to bear on the subject. Prince Sultan took up gliding in 1985 and has logged over 6000 flying hours, flown more than 30 types of aircraft ranging from single-engine (land and sea), multi-engine, propeller to jets (civil and military) as well as helicopters, has extensive mountain flying experience and made history as the first Arab in space as Payload Specialist, space shuttle mission STS-51G in 1985.
The third member, John Bally, had trained both princes on gliders and was the obvious choice to accompany them on the trip. A pilot since 1967 with well over 4,500 hours experience on over 100 types of aircraft, Bally is an international competition pilot/instructor and has flown several times on the British gliding team. His knowledge of mountains comes from a background of extensive mountain gliding, ski-mountaineering and from his membership in the Alpine Ski Club.
The first day started inauspiciously; the main pursuit vehicle carrying the spares, communications equipment and mobile workshop, driven by one of the lynchpins of the support team, Ahmed Al-Zahrani, collected punctures in two tires on the way to the Saudi Aviation Club hangar at Thumama, just north of Riyadh. Bally’s glider then became uncooperative when an engine fuse kept tripping out with potentially serious consequences. It could not be accessed from the cockpit during flight and needed attention before take-off. An hour’s work with a Swiss Army penknife and a length of wire cleared it. “The route and the plans are not set,” Bally started at the preflight briefing. “Flexibility is the key.”
The three gliders were to be the lead aircraft, pursued in the air by a Twin Otter carrying recording gear and photographers and chased on the ground by a rescue and support team. Theirs was not an enviable task; following the route — up to 1000 kilometers a day — they faced up to 12 hours driving with baggage and survival gear followed by hours servicing the gliders and fixing any technical problems that might arise. Added to that was the responsibility of getting to, and retrieving, any pilot who had gone down in inhospitable terrain. To their everlasting credit, they toiled under pressure for eight straight days and nights with nary a sharp word from any of them.
The first challenge that became obvious was that the pursuit aircraft was a flying camel in pursuit of three aerial gazelles. A fine, sturdy and reliable beast of burden, the Twin Otter is comparatively sluggish when it comes to keeping up with the graceful soaring of gliders. The second was turbulence caused by thermals, strong updrafts of air rising several hundred meters a minute.
“The fuel of gliders,” explained Prince Sultan, “is the thermal. That gives them height which can be converted to speed and distance. We are constantly on the lookout for them.”
The same thermals were the bane of Mohammed Tahir, the Otter pilot and the cameramen on the plane. Tracking the gliders meant flying into heavily disturbed air.
Fully loaded, a Twin Otter weighs about six tons, a mere piece of fluff to a fast-rising thermal. If a thermal can rattle a 243-ton Boeing 777, consider the plight of videographers strapped into parachute harnesses and desperate for steady shots through the Otter’s open door.
The glider pilots faced similar challenges. Strapped into a tiny cockpit crammed with avionics and cameras, they not only faced overheating, losing up to two liters of water in six hours, even though constantly sipping from a camel-pack, but were also subject to powerful g-forces and the same severe turbulence. The effect is rather like riding in an un-sprung baby carriage on a rollercoaster at 120 kph for several hours.
While all three pilots later agreed that the gliding was superb, coordinating with the Twin Otter proved difficult and thus limited the chances for the videographers to film the team in action. The difficulties were compounded by the disparity in the performance between the two types of aircraft. Thermals whisked the gliders upwards at over 1000 feet a minute, well beyond the capability of the lumbering Otter. Planning intercept courses in three dimensions while the target keeps moving is beyond the capabilities of all but the most sophisticated equipment.
Leg one from Riyadh to Hail via Qassim amounted to a dress rehearsal. Leaving Thumama around mid-day as the dust-devils whirled in from the south, indicating the presence of thermals, the gliders powered up to 14,000 feet for the long glide in. The Stemme S10 has a motor and retractable propeller used for take-off and in flight when conditions are difficult.
The route lay north over desert and rock. Below, huge green crop circles drifted by and the camera crew adjusted themselves to the howling wind and chill. The ground temperature was a warm 98 Fahrenheit but at 12,000 feet, that is only about 50 F. In the 150-kph wind blowing into the aircraft, the wind chill factor reduces the temperature to about 37 degrees F. — five degrees above freezing. It was an odd experience, shivering violently in the relentless sunshine over the deserts of Saudi Arabia.
Bally said that that it was only on the first day that the true potential for gliding in the Kingdom became apparent. “The conditions present problems, especially in an emergency or land out situation.” It was the first time that the three pilots had flown together outside training as a group and that, observed Bally, put them all on a huge learning curve. Team flying is difficult but increases the chances of finding good air; if one member finds it, the others follow. This assumes good thermals, good visibility and reliable communications; none was the case on day one. “John (Bally) was wandering about at one stage,” said Prince Bandar. “Later we found out that he had both GPS (Global Positioning System) and radio problems; the poor visibility just added to the difficulties.” As a result and because of the lack of desirable thermals, the team spent a lot of flying time at low altitudes in the 45 C temperatures trying to spot dust devils which indicated rising air.
The route for day two took them from Hail to Wedjh, a coastal town 160 km south of Tabuk. The flight path included dark mountainous regions, ideal for generating powerful thermals early in the day. Under the wings was a patchwork of dark ragged rock, jumbled into sharp ridges and mountains separated by large stretches of desert. In some of the remotest spots, there were tiny settlements or individual habitations, each with greenery which indicated sub-surface water. Many were almost invisible in the sea of sand; others were in wadis at the feet of rock piles.
As day ends, thermal numbers decrease as the ground cools. This provides a limited opportunity to gain altitude for the final glide in. “When you have gained height — perhaps 18000 feet,” said Prince Bandar, “you don’t want to sacrifice it at the end of the day if you can help it.” It also limits the opportunity for photography if the chase plane is at a ceiling of 12,000 feet.
The final glide into Wedjh was, said Bally, incredibly smooth as the cool sea air drawn in by the heated land mass was held back by the mountains that run parallel to the coast. No thermals and relatively still air brought welcome relief after a day chasing thermals.
“I have never seen such a staggeringly beautiful area,” said Bally of the journey from Wedjh through Al-Ula to Jebel Abiyadh (White Mountain) on day three. “It’s as if time had not moved on; you can see the camels, traders and the old silk and spice route.” The glider pilots wove between the rocky outcrops on the approach to Al-Ula, wingtips only a few meters from jagged scarps. Taking advantage of some strong thermals, the gliders sailed eastwards, over a brown rock pavement with deep sheer-sided ravines, towards Al-Ula and Madain Saleh. On the approach to Al-Ula, the bigger ravines contained small farms, dwarfed by the massive rock faces that loomed over them. The town of Al-Ula occupies a particularly wide ravine, stretching across the rock pavement. From the air, it swallows the town in massive petrified jaws, but from the ground, the rock walls appear only as cliffs.
It was going to be a long flying day — some seven hours in the air — and to inject a frisson of excitement and oblige the cameras, the team swooped low into the ravines. Following them, the Twin Otter pilots pushed the craft to its limits.
They used every bit of their considerable skill and every centimeter of the flaps to wrestle the aircraft between the rocks and so keep the gliders in sight for the photographers. “We were down at palm-tree height in the heat,” said Bally, “setting up shots for the camera. It was tight formation flying and that meant very hard work. It was great fun, but extraordinarily demanding flying.”
Part of the problem for the gliders was flying slowly enough for the helicopter camera team — which by now had joined the chase. “It’s one thing doing it fast, where you have enough stored energy to convert speed to height and give yourself a few more seconds latitude in the event of difficulty,” he said, “but at 60 knots or so, it’s tough stuff.”
Massive rock formations flashed by the open door so close it seemed possible to reach out and touch them. Up and down became secondary considerations as photographers hung precariously from ropes securing them to strong-points in the cabin; cameras slammed into foreheads in the buffeting of the 120 kph slipstream and silent prayers were offered for the pilots’ continued good health and concentration. It finally ended when the plane emerged over Madain Saleh and followed the gliders round the remains of the ancient Nabatean settlement.
Oddly, the site is less impressive from the air than from the ground where the scale of work involved in cutting tombs and dwellings into solid rock overwhelms the visitor. From 5000 feet, the intricately carved porticos and massive facades dwindle into little more than small openings in the rocks.
(To be continued next week)
