We had the typical morning north wind, classic "blue" conditions. Forecast, light with top of usable lift in the 7-8000ft asl range. Mia and Mike were going to be my "children" for the day.... I was hoping to earn the coveted "two thumbs up" as Tow-Master.
Our morning briefings include laptops and smart phones all doing the XC Skies link and anything else that we can find. Usually this process has two conclusions.. go flying .... or .... go to the lake. It was close, but the "Go flying" vote was cast.
Before loading up, we had a visitor this morning... the bird worlds version of an attack jet fighter:
We were pretty sure this was an immature Coopers Hawk , the smaller cousin of the infamous Goshawk. They mainly hunt small birds (strangely none around during his visit?)... he seemed to be eyeing up our Cat Mber but was probably calculating the mayhem would probably be not worth the risk. After about a half hour he blasted off in pursuit of breakfast, not sure if he was successful.
Our buddy from Chelan, Jeff showed up but was not flying and joined the ground crew for the day. We towed up Mia and Mike with 1200 ft tows, both had trouble getting away, but soon connected and were climbing through 7000 ft asl. With no real plans, Jeff and I where surprised that Mia suddenly decided that she was going to cross Banks Lake and head east to Govan (near Wilbur). Mia took off in the lead with Mike having to grovel near the West edge of Banks. Today our pilots had the pleasure of sharing skies with the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner , as it cruised up and down Banks Lake.... really need to look up how far the turbulence extends below these big birds.
With Jeff and I crewing in the Suzuki, we chased our team out past Almira. It was a slow go, broken climbs and not much of any sort of drift. Eventually Mike turned Govan and headed North to get to the high ground, Mia turned short of Govan and started back on the south edge of the highlands. Mansfield was goal....
Mike was first to arrive for the Banks crossing, just over 8000ft asl, lost 500ft for the 2 mile gap, on the west side gained back to 8000..... then got hammered with turbulence (as he put it... with lots of vigorous hand gestures later that evening!). He got through the turb's and continued scratching toward Mansfield.
Mia was further south, crossed the lake with a similar experience... lots of turb's on the west side, but not so lucky to find anything more.
Mike landed Mansfield, Mia landed just east of Saint Andrews. Both describe landing in a total vacuum on the ground... from the sounds of it both had tail wind / thermal events. Mike tilled some soil with a nice soft belly landing, Mia much more enthusiastically terminated her landing with the pointy end stuck in the ground. No bent parts so everybody was happy.
Mia's flight ended with a 91km flat triangle / out and return and Mikes flight was not up as of my posting (there had been some issues with the OLC server.... looks like it was being "looked at") but I'm guessing his flight to be around 125km OR (both pilots logged 4+ hours of airtime).
More of the same weather is predicted over the next 3-5 days.
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