Gray November Flying

Looking back at launch

Toussaint (all saints' day) is a holiday in France, together with the 11th of Nov. St Andre gets a lot of visitors for these holidays from pilots hoping to extend their flying season. But today the weather didn't really cooperate - flyable but, with very little sun and a low inversion, maybe not soarable. Launch was crowded but without much action - vultures were seen flapping and almost all launchers sunk without trace.

But it clearly wasn't going to 'turn on' and seemed as likely to get worse as improve, so I launched and enjoyed an unusual flight for St Andre. Very marginal lift, mostly ridge soaring and lots of traffic around launch (pilots that sunk out came back up for second or third flights). A few thermals took me to a maximum of 200 m over launch, and I also had to work my way up from 150 m below launch more than once. Lift was scarce enough that you had to concentrate to stay up. I managed to mow up and down the ridge to the Antenae to avoid the traffic. From around 3.00 the lift weakened and things got a little quieter; I concentrated on staying up and landed just shy of 4.00, after a little more than 2 hours in the air.

The contrast to the normal flying here was a nice change and it was about as good as you could hope for from such an unpromising gray day...