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 Americas & Beyond | June 2008 
Bay Area Glider Makes Record-Breaking Flight to Mexico
 Melissa Weaver - Santa Cruz Sentinel
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| | Eric Rupp and accomplished Hollister glider pilot Ramy Yanetz, taken from the Cotto duster strip in the San Joaquin Valley near Hollister after taking off from Truckee and crossing the San Joaquin Valley from the 18,000 feet over the Sierra Crest, almost making it back to Hollister, Sept. 7, 2004. | | |
Six hours into a record-breaking glider flight from the San Francisco Bay Area to Mexico, Eric Rupp finally allowed himself to breathe.
The end of the flight that he had begun to think was impossible was within reach. The continuous 444 miles of non-powered flight - from Hollister to the border town of Calexico - using only wind currents and thermal air pockets took him over remote mountains and deserts.
"It's a pretty intense thing to do," said Rupp. "I was really charged up for hours."
When he landed, the Santa Cruz resident broke the San Francisco Bay Area record held by Brian Choate, of Berkeley, who glided 362 miles from Hollister to Bermuda Dunes on May 5, 2003.
Starting at 11:20 a.m. last Saturday, Rupp, a 49-year-old father of two, spent seven and a half hours in a cockpit about the size of the interior of a Smart Car - the relentless sun pouring through the glass as he breathed through an oxygen tube to combat the effects of the thinning air. Using pockets of warm air, he would spiral his DG-300 sailplane to altitudes as high as 17,300 feet before coasting downward on cooler currents, reaching speeds upwards of 100 mph. For every foot the plane climbs, it can glide 40.
"I was literally flying with hawks and eagles, wing tip to wing tip," said the pilot of 10 years, explaining that glider pilots regularly follow birds because they know where thermals are.
Trailing Rupp much of the way in separate gliders were fellow pilots Harry Fox and Tom Hubbard, both of Santa Cruz. Launched from Hollister after Rupp, they remained in radio contact, telling each other where to find lift, said Fox, president of the Bay Area Soaring Associates. He and Hubbard turned around to fly home around Santa Barbara because, unlike Rupp, they didn't have anyone following them with a trailer to haul their planes back.
On the ground, Loren Rupp chased his brother along Interstate 5, dragging a trailer for 11 and a half hours through the desert as garbled radio calls came through telling him Rupp's location. The two brothers were fairly even until they reached Bakersfield, at which point Eric Rupp skirted some clouds, got tremendous lift, and "screamed off into the wild blue yonder," as his brother put it. He lost contact then, but continued to drive for the next five hours along the planned route.
When he heard from his brother had landed safely on the Mexican boarder, Loren Rupp said he was "surprised, but not that surprised" to learn that his brother had made it.
"Eric is very driven," he said. Rupp arrived a few hours after the plane, and promptly went to the 7-Eleven to get some cheap beer to celebrate.
"While I was still on the runway, I started getting calls congratulating me," said Eric Rupp.
His plane was equipped with a tracking device, and friends and fellow members of the flight community had been following his progress. "It was hard to really get it," he said. "This is something we've been trying to do for so long."
Rupp said that each time a glider pilot would leave on a long-distance flight, he would joke and say, "I'm going to Mexico." A goal of theirs, glider pilots had been making increasingly longer flights down the state, but would have to turn back because they would lose their lift.
Fox called Rupp, "an airborne adventurer," saying that Rupp doesn't mind if he is forced to land in a remote area and talk a truck driver into giving him a ride home. Rupp said he calls that part of the trip, "adventure number two." |
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