Flying at Pasak Jolasit Dam

From ทริปเขื่อนป่าสักชลสิทธิ์

Last weekend, we at the Vineyard Flying Club was scheduled to visit Pi Suntorn's hometown (Pi--is a Thai title for calling older friends, brothers or sisters) in Lopburi. There, we would have an opportunity to fly over miles of rice and sun flower pads. Not only that,  one of the main attractions for this trip is Pasak Jolasit Dam, the longest earth-filled dam in Thailand.

After a flight in the evening of Sat. 28 February, we in a group of 15 (9 pilots plus their family) met at the PTT petrol station by the Eastern highway. In order to commit a flight in the following morning, we thought that it would be less exhausted to travel at night and get some sleeps before the flight in the morning. All of us traveled in three pick-up trucks and a sedan. It would be quite odd to other cars to spot three trucks and a car with fans on their back. I did get asked at the toll station as to why I need to fit a fan to my car. 'Does it help save your fuel?', asked the officer curiously. Quite reasonable question during the petrol crisis like this. 

Thanks to my pocket pc phone with embedded GPS, we finally arrived at Pi Suntorn's place just an hour past midnight. The wind was a little bit high with some rain tendency. Many of us expressed their worries about flying possibility in the morning. We, however, decided to have some sleeps and hope for a clear weather in the morning. Pi Suntorn had prepared enough picnic beds and linens for all of us, so I didn't have to use the tent I put into my car boot earlier.

From ทริปเขื่อนป่าสักชลสิทธิ์ (Pi Suntorn on the right of the photo)

We were waken up by a noise of brief rainfall. Walking to the supposed-to-be-our-airfield, the wind was still too high (~7-9 km/h) with some turbulance. However, after half an hour of broken heart waiting, the condition developed a better tendency. Pi Tho was the first to take-off on his trike with red Adventure Expert wing. He reported over a radio that the weather was fine. We all then followed.

During my preparation to take-off, I found another problem on the airfield itself. We adopted a sun flower pad behind Pi Suntorn's house as our temporary airfield. Therefore, it left some traces of just harvested sun flowers such as plenty of trunks and dried leaves. Many of them got stucked in my lines.  It forced me to change the take-off spot several time until I finally found the clean one. In fact, I chose the spot where Pi Wigrom layed his expensive Dudek Synthesis wing, with a confidence that he would have cleared the spot and got rid of all obstrcles. I was right! How neat he was.

From ทริปเขื่อนป่าสักชลสิทธิ์

I took off a little after Chit, when other people already set their bearing to the dam. In the air, I was stunned by the senery before my eyes. The land was large and flat, which was different to the beach-and-hill area in Bangsaen where I was familiar with. Following Chit for a while, he made me surprised by turning back to the direction of our origin. I was shocked as we had just been in the air for less than 15 minutes. I radioed him, but he didn't answer. At once, I saw other pilots turning back as well. I reluctantly but obediently turned back. Very disappointed that I hadn't reached or even seen the dam yet. Considering that the pilots ahead might have been experincing turbulance or bad weather condition, I thus had to turn back. Anyway, after a few minutes of heart broken flying back, I saw Pi Tho, Pi Ja and Pi Nan flying ahead to the dam. I radioed them and found out that the condition was still good. So I decided to follow them.

We flew for about 5 km to the dam and tried to circle it. I was having such a very good time. The condition was mild. Everything was just perfect. As a matter of fact, I had been to the dam before, but by car and on ground, not by air like this time. So I was so excited. At the dam tourist centre, we saw a very big white Buddha statue (see more pictures in my web album, url is given at the end of this article) by the dam core. We flew around for a moment and decided to set off for a mountain in the opposite direction. I checked my fuel and was relieved that I had enough to remain in the air for more than an hour. I was hoping to fly to the mountain top if the weather permitted. So I open my throttle about 70-80% to induce a climb. There were about 10 km to go and I thought I should be able to reach about 1500 feet by the time with my small wing and little horse power engine. There remained only Pi Tho, Pi Ja and myself at the moment as Pi Nan had decided to pull back. On the way, we had to pass by a small town called Wang Muang, but we didn't give it much attention as the mountain was waiting for us. 

From ทริปเขื่อนป่าสักชลสิทธิ์

Not long with a tail wind that drove me to 50 km/h, we reached the mountain. It was an almost bald stone mountain that rises to about 1800 feet. Luckily, I was at high enough altitude by the time, so I decided to explored the summit. Pi Tho and Pi Ja told me later that they were trying to do so, but changed their minds due to the wind blowing down from the top preventing them from climbing.

From ทริปเขื่อนป่าสักชลสิทธิ์

To my surprice, the summit was not that empty like I understood. It was quite colourful with plenty of trees and beautiful grass. It was so wonderful that I couldn't help think of landing on the top. It was a carzy and suicidal idea, I knew, as there was no other means to climb and perform a rescue, if someone got stuck on the top as the mountain is truely steep.

Being satisfied with myself and after having circled the summit for several rounds, I heard via the radio that Pi Tho and Pi Ja were ready to head back for landing. We were about 10 km from the origin. I checked the fuel again and started decending. We landed at about 9.30 under a mild wind condition and that marked the end of one of the most perfect flight.

Pi Sunthorn's family was so kind to feed us with lots of tasty local foods. We had time to relax quite a bit before setting off for home. I went to swim in a little pond by the house. The water in the pond came from the natural spring water source. We headed back home at around 12.00 and made a stop at Ongkarak Ultralight airfield to have a look around. We reached Vineyard Airfield at around 17.00, and you may guess, another flight was to be done there.

** More pics can be seen at http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/UggPfcuvwE3aFP1py0rzjw?feat=directlink

** More information about Pasak Jolasit Dam can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasak_Jolasit_Dam