Frozen edge to altitude record
Fifty years ago Doug Yarrell found it hard to celebrate flying a glider higher than anyone else in the world; he was too cold.
The Masterton pilot, now 85 and still flying four to five times a week, clearly remembers the flight over Wairarapa on March 9, 1968, that shattered the world gliding altitude record.
The record stood for a matter of weeks before it was surpassed in Nevada, United States, but the milestone has never been bettered in New Zealand.
As he rode the wave upwards, his rate of ascent was an astounding 1000 metres a minute.
Though he found this exciting, getting up to those rarefied heights brought bone-chilling temperatures.
The enormous discomfort somewhat detracted from the elation one might expect to feel when surpassing the previous record of 33,000ft, he said.
‘‘I started to get a bit convulsive with the cold. By this time the canopy was iced up and the instruments were icing up on me.’’
After he had gone as high as he could he descended as fast as he could. Even after he landed he wasn’t able to fully revel in his triumph. ‘‘Because I was still suffering from the penetration of the cold into the marrow of the body for about three days, it took that long to really get over it.
‘‘Then I could sit and think about what had actually happened,’’ he said.
In the late 1960s, Yarrell was a keen glider pilot having won competitions all over the country.
He had his eye on flying to extreme heights for some time and when the weather pattern rolled through creating the wave system needed for such altitudes, he took his chance.
The German Schemp-Hirth glider he was flying was towed by a Tigermoth biplane from Hood Aerodrome in Masterton up to about 1300 ft (396m) where Yarrell released himself and searched for the wave that would take him up.
Aviators around the country were aware of the Wairarapa Aero Club pilot’s attempt and nearby radio operators were keeping a close eye on the situation.
Yarrell’s aircraft was under the guidance of the Ohakea Air Force base air controller at the time and when it was near its peak of 37,288 feet (11,356 metres), the controller let him know one of their Antarctica-bound Star lifters had just flown underneath him.
To verify the altitude, Yarrell’s barograph was sent to the DSIR which calibrated and certified the official altitude.
New Zealand has almost unique topography which produces these waves of air. There were only a couple of other places in the world such as the United States and India which produced this type of effect, Yarrell said.