Saturday 9/24/11

[Peter Kelly]

Wx looked iffy - but could be good.
I opted not to fly.

At 11 AM I look at the wsc Cams ans it looks ok, and then I check the schedule and there are half a dozen racers on there!
I call Cora and ask when they got on the schedule -
she says ten minutes ago!

Guess I'll go join them - it's ONLY 11:10 AM.

[Noelle Mayes]

7V-Gimmey, SD-Dockter, YE-Roberts, 2T-Deane, JH-Ogden, OJ-Duncan, G3-Farnsworth, PK-Kelly all took tows today and are encountering weak wave in the Bear Valley area. Update as of 14:30 9/24

[Peter Kelly]

Evening debrief of the flights...

Weak wave you say?
That was early on.
As it turned out, a couple of pilots got up to 14,000.
Several covered some good distances.

As for me, I didn't have the patience to climb above 9,000 at St Johns.
I pushed forward to Goat from St Johns and scratched my way back to 3 sisters.
As I left Indian Ranch area it dawned on me that today was a perfect ridge day, So...
I simply made my way past Antelope Vly, and ran the ridge south to Lake Bessa.
It was such a piece of cake I was staying 1,000 over the ridge at 3,500. I played, took lots of photos, it was totally relaxing.
In order to get some better photos, I flew west of the ridge so I could be even with it in altitude, then I simply moved back towards the ridge and allowed myself to climb and kept running at 90 kts.
3 Sisters to south to Bessa Twrs, back up to the 20 gap, then one more trip down south to Ridge South. I logged over 260 km on the flight ( OLC distance).
North bound, between Rumsey and 3 sisters I climbed to 1,000 above glide (about 3,700 ft) and headed home. By now everyone else had already landed. Plenty of lift on the way back to WSC.

eight of us had dinner in Arbuckle

what a day.
I'll put a few photos up here tomorrow.

[Larry Roberts]

I was flying the 'calendar' model, not the Dr. Jack model, so headed for the airport. I wasn't alone. (sorry Rex, Noelle, and Cora - should have called). I wanted to update some software in my glider anyway. Well, the day looked fair, the Dr. Jack model was changing as we looked. I double towed with Peter Deane 2T, we were right behind Scot SD & Ray 7V. They towed to Tree Farm, we towed to south Goat after it sounded like Tree Farm was not that great.
I found almost nothing at S. Goat, 2T didn't either, so we headed toward Tree Farm. I got down to about 4k at the East end of the Ridge, and finally hit something - used it as a thermal to gain altitude, then headed toward St. John when Ray and Scot reported they were finding wave. It was light, but working. Got to 14,785 feet Thank you 2T for reminding me about my O2. Fun day. Also found wave just east of Cortina ridge, but 4 hours was enough for me today.

Here is a photo taken at 14,500 ft. Flying NW, but looking Westerly or WSW.

SeeYou Flight

[Peter Kelly]

As promised, here are a few photos of my flight along the ridge....

1 in this first one, I was reversing course at Bessa Towers - you can see from my PDA the distance back to 3 Sisters is 33 miles.

2 the second photo is with the camera part way out the window, about five miles south of Rumsey Gap.

3 this third one show the view back towards clear lake

4 and this last one is a view of Lake Berreyessa as I approach the ridge South TP.



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