Nothing inspirational in the forecast. Blue, south winds and only only a marginal soaring forecast. Since we got blown out yesterday, we thought we should at least put in the effort.
Today when we arrived at the tow site, winds where way less then the previous day. There were some big dust devils in the neighbourhood but not as many in previous days. Randy was expecting the wind to pick up, but I was hoping we could still do some flying so I rigged and was up on the truck before 1pm.
Mia delivered me down the tow road directly into some 1200fpm up while on tow. I was near 1000ft agl when I pinned off. Of course as soon as I pinned off, the lift was gone?..... a quick downwind search and I was back into it and was climbing in a smooth 400fpm. I found the lift surprisingly smooth, but there was definitely some drift (10-14mph out of the south), By the time I peaked out at 7600ft asl, I had drifted 3 km's north. I decided that I would press directly south.
Heading south, given the winds, pretty much kept me in the thermal source/street. I managed slow progress south for about 20km's, consistently being able to top up and continue. (Randy decided that given my ATOS was having a slow go, he didn't bother to setup) . At the 20km mark, the bottom fell out and I could find no more thermals to further my progress. I landed after a brief unsuccessful attempt to pull off a low save (drifting north 5km's in the process at less then 3500ft asl... or 800ft agl).
After packing up, Mia and I headed back to Mansfield, picked up Randy and headed for one last trip Park Lake. Later, Mia created a fantastic fish dinner on the barbeque. Life is good.
Sunday, August 14th looked like the weather was going to change for the worse, so this was our last flight for this trip. We expect to be back for an extended September Long Weekend... perhaps the weather God's will smile for that trip?
Will try to get a photo album up in the next few days along with a whole bunch of GoPro footage.
No comments:
Post a Comment