Saturday, July 4, 2009

Black Cap

When we got up on Friday there were already clouds in the sky; over development seemed likely and did happen. But we did manage some nice flights from Black Cap early and late.

Dan and I had a flight as it was over developing to the N and the E. As the wind was from the S and pretty strong, that left flying out over the valley to the W, so that's where we headed. With threatening skies on my right and lovely, puffy clouds on my left, I flew out W. I picked a huge, empty field to land in and was just packing my wing when a group of horses arrived to examine the intruder - maybe the field wasn't as empty as I thought. They were very curious!

At the end of the day we had an interesting flight. Conditions were slightly on the strong side at launch and in the distance - maybe 10 miles away, over flat ground - some clouds were showing streaks of virga. We looked at conditions carefully and I came to the conclusion that, at the end of the day, things were manageable.
I took off and flew along the ridge to the N and then glided out in boaty air to land 4.5 miles from launch. As I packed up my wing, Dan arrived in sight, higher over the ridge than I had been; he glided out and landed half a mile north of me. I was wondering how he did that when Tom appeared much higher than Dan or me; instead of gliding out towards us he used speed-bar and ears to lose altitude and land.

It seems as though the distant virga was giving a mini gust front and that conditions had built after I launched; Tom topped out nearly 1,500 ft higher than I had. I never used my speed-bar and Tom used it almost from the start. It all goes to show that, even at sunset, you can get surprisingly strong conditions in the desert.

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