Our Flying on August 1st....

Late report on our flying on August 1st. I don't know how the others keep up with daily posting but I tend to find myself scrambling for time to make posts, especially when I have to take time out for editorial retractions ;-)

Mia's turn at running the rig. This morning Nicole (Nicole's Blog) stopped by after spreading bad weather over every contest she attended in the Rockies and Utah. We immediately told her to leave town as we were hoping to fly! We both skeptically eyed a 20kmph North wind that was blasting through Mansfield. I felt confident it was going to lay down (well sort of confident)... Nicole decided to head off toward the Butte and maybe back to Canada.

Mike on his VR was going to be my wing man for the day loaded up and headed off to L-Road. By 12, the winds started to subside (pretty typical event when we get north winds in the summer). It was basically "blue" with a few scattered Q's in the distant north. XC skies was all over the map when it came to the GFS, NAM and RCU forecasts, I was not overly optimistic but thought it was worth a try.

I took the first tow north from our Mid point start on L-Road and released with a 1200 ft tow, right over L + 13 and slowly began scratching my way into the day (drifting with the north wind). Our "plan" was.... If we got high we would head to Wilson Creek. Nope....I was having trouble getting over 6500asl so that was not happening. Plan B.... drift with the north wind to the Beezly hills up over Ephrata and try and put some sort of triangle together. If it ended in failure we would be closer to our favourite swimming hole at Park Lake.

As I crossed the highway at the south end of L-Road, Mike was off tow and scratching hard. Mia spent about 5 gallons of gas racing the tow rig up and down every road that was under Mike trying to break a thermal off. Mike stuck to it, climbed out and was 30 minutes behind, also struggling to get high.

Both of us took our time and wandered down wind. Mike was only 20 minutes behind as I turned our unofficial south turnpoint near the edge of the Beezly hills (50km out). At this point we were starting to get past 7500asl (I managed to milk some thermals near the turnpoint to 8300asl). We ran into one lone Sailplane pilot doing what the local pilots call the "power line patrol " Bob Firth's Sailplane flight....

I lead the way north bumping my way across Jameson Coulee (at a very low 6500asl and not many places to land), worked my way north to Farmer (again, my shadow, "Mike" was tagging along the same route). In the meantime, Mia was keeping close below us in support, there if we needed in wind info for an out landing.

I had pretty much given up on anything major and was simply trying to limp back to the tow site. I was just short of Withrow, climbing past 8600 it was time to turn for "goal". Mike pretty much did the same but slight further north at the Withrow turnpoint.

Mike near Withrow, looking over to Chelan Butte:

The day was getting late and the air was supper soft, Still we pressed on. Just shy of the towsite, the decision was made to make Mansfield the goal and call it a day. I back tracked from near L-Road, Mike approached from the south side of town with both of us arriving at exactly the same height.

Mia advised us the LZ had little or no wind... or any wind that was there would come from every direction. I tried to spiral down ahead of Mike, only to blunder into lift and find myself at the same level again!... With Mia dutifully kicking dirt and holding a windsock the whole time I slipped back into another spiral and ended it with an dusty but OK landing, Mike pulled off a perfect landing (but a little short ;-) with a long walk... both in NO Wind. We both hiked the gliders back to the house, with Mia serving up a pair of nice cold Becks from the hanger fridge.

Officially, we acknowledged the fantastic work of our winch/crew with a dual "Thumbs Up":

My Flight and Mike Bomstad's Flight

Both of us, ended with over 4 hours of airtime and 100+km's FAI triangles.... real hard work.. rewarded with Cold beer, bare feet on fresh cut grass and a Barbecued chicken dinner made by the best Tow Master ever.. (man can I suck up....)

I was also happy to hear that Robin Sather (a PG pilot from the Fraser Valley) managed an nice flight (Robin's Flight) off the Butte, along with Andrew Berkley (Andrew's Flight). Good job for both of these PG flying "Butt Heads". :-)

We did not bother to fly on Tuesday, lots of wild looking air up high and not much going on low down. We pulled the "pin" and headed back to Abbotsford for work but will be back on Friday night to put in one more week of chasing dust devils around the flats of Washington State.... sorry for the late posting.