Can you tell which way the wind is blowing from? The two Northenrmost tracks are mine from this week and the Easternmost one is Meredyth's from yesterday.
Yesterday was looking iffy as usual but turned into a real plum. The South winds were blowing pretty strong with some thermic gusts on launch around 14-18mphs. Slightly puckering and once in the air you had to grin and bear it till you got up. Cloudbase was higher than the other day, around 5000ft this time. Dave Byrne and I launched off almost simultaneously and cruised to the East up the ridge first and looked for the one that was gonna take us up. A couple of passes provided us with strong ridge lift as we were getting buffeted by the cyclic windy thermals. Noticing a couple of eagles climbing at the SW point of the ridge we followed and rocketed up and drifted with it over the back. Climbing and drifting into the bowl below the Towers the entire bowl it seemed was like a volcanic eruption of lift. Circling and gliding with this lifty air mass, Dave and I took it and left at around 4800ft since in the next ten seconds we might of hit the airspace the lift was so strong under these clouds. Gliding to the Green towers we found weakening conditions since the SW wind was blowing apart the lift. But, a lifty line took us to Fall City where we tooled around and drifted North with the thermals. Flatland flying now we had to slow down a bit and find the good climbs. Everything was drifting to the no mans land area but we pushed up quartering the winds up valley. Establishing in the mellow lift over the beginning of the plateau we glided North working the clouds and gliding along to the idyllic green farmlands of Carnation. Soon after we touched down gently at the high school soccer field. It was fun to have a flying partner today and it made the retrieve/s more interesting once we finally returned to the LZ. Meredyth managed to get away from Tiger and headed North for the first time. Just after we left, she got up and flew over our house near Fall City and boated around for awhile before ending up in Snoqualmie, nice!
It was a nice and clear crisp day. I shot a bunch of pictures but realized later I forgot to put my memory card back in, so at least you can look at our tracks. I dont have Dave's track but its nearly the same as mine. SM
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What up bro? Sorry I haven't kept in touch. It's just that I'm flying my ass off in Manilla, Australia. I've learned sooo much in the past few weeks. I have a bunch of CC flights of 15 to 20kms. I just can't seem to break the 20 km mark. I'll be heading back to the states in a month or so and I'll be looking to fly. Lora and I will be living in the Sacramento area for a year while she looks for a job. We should hook up for some flying somewhere this summer.
Tim
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