Lunch Time Flight

The weather has been unsettled and unseasonably cold for the last few days. I managed a hike on Sunday just before some bad weather arrived (see http://picasaweb.google.com/DMMullin/Tartonne11April2010Sel#). Since then, it has been cold and we've even had snow.

Today was sunny but cold, with a promising flying forecast, but with a threat of showers or storms this afternoon. I had a late afternoon meeting, but wanted a flight so headed up the hill in the late morning. The walk was very pleasant, with increasing amounts of snow, until near the top of the hill. At this point, there is much less shade; so the snow had melted, transforming the ground into super sticky clay. By the time I reached launch, my boots must have weighed 5 kilos each.

It was cold at the top and some big clouds were approaching fast from the south, growing as they did so. I launched quickly and thermaled a few hundred feet over. Cloudbase was maybe 800 ft above launch and the average climb rate was around 800 ft per minute. So as soon as you got in a decent thermal you found yourself rocketing up towards the base of a monster cloud. The clouds just seemed to be growing too quickly and they were too low to easily avoid, so after around 15 minutes I headed out towards the LZ, packed up and headed back for a late lunch.

I kept an eye on the sky through the afternoon and it never overdeveloped. In fact, the clouds seemed to reach their maximum when I was in the air (around 1.00 pm) and by mid afternoon were looking much less threatening.