Wave: Sunday 1/31

[Kempton]

Beautiful shot Ramy and Luke. That little Capay valley can produce when the setup is right. My experience is that often the height of the lennie stack is proportional to lift strength. Was there unusually strong lift at that stack?

[RamyYanetz]

Average climb rate over most lennies yesterday was only 2-3 knots. This stack provided a solid 6 knots once you got to the south side.
wind was mostly around 45 knots from 210, as much as 60 knots at 18K. The very southerly direction resulted in more spotty wavelets similar to north wind wave, but got better as the day progressed. It filled in with clouds very quickly at the end of the day, resulted in interesting final glide from Byron area to Williams over a solid undercast although with downwind escape NE to the valley if needed.
my flight is on OLC https://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-3....l?dsId=8252794

Ramy

[Russ Pillard]

Nice photograph Ramy. I was at my computer all afternoon watching the wave flights, but yours was most interesting trying to guess where you were going land! Thanks for the excitement. Who says soaring isn't a spectator sport!

[Allan Austria]

I was at work watching the weather, should have taken the day off! Here's that same stack over Capay, taken a few miles SW of Esparto(looking NW).

[Pete (98)]

Monday (Feb 1) was an interesting and fun country club (i.e. no crazy wind on the ground) wave day. The wrinkle for the day was the wind coming out of 200-210º aloft which made the wave a little spotty and weak in places which was not surprising for this direction.

As I was driving north up I-505, you could see the Lennies building in the Bear Valley area and north.

The sky continued to improve while I was prepping for take off:


When I took off, I was planning on releasing around 4k between the canal and 3 Sisters. Unfortunately, not a whisper of wave. As I continued west on tow, it was becoming clear that I would need to tow higher (bummer...) into Bear Valley. You could see wispy bits forming on the west side of the lennie at the top of Bear Valley just north of the round green field which seemed like the place to go. I released at 7k working a soft wave which slowly got better to 1 - 3 kts, but spotty and moving around a bit.

While I was climbing slowly up, I was trying to decide if I should go north towards St. John Mtn area where Ramy had been or south down to Capay Valley where the wave was looking quite a bit more defined with less clouds. It was also up wind to make the return trip fast to Williams which is really was. Looking south towards Capay Valley with 2 wave bars:


Running south in Capay Valley in front of the lennie like clouds at 80 kts holding my own waiting to get to the lennie stack:


I continued south all of the way to Nut Tree and back north to just a little bit south of the Elk Creek turn point which was a pretty fast run with the quartering tail wind. I turned before Elk Creek because the wave was getting a little too spotty.

Kemp ~ I had a similar experience at the lennie as Ramy; 4 - 6 kts to 17,700' very close to the Casino TP. The climb was still there when going north, but the lennie had disappeared. The wind was still the same strength and direction.

I posted my flight on OLC: https://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-3....l?dsId=8252937