Memorial Day Highland

[John Simon]

Heather and I set out early (for us) to try to get some AM landing work in as the forecast for the day was lousy, with showers and mediocre ceilings and lift. Sunny let me fly his Combat and Heather was working a landing or two on her Falcon. Nobody was there yet, but as we got ready a few folks showed up and got ready to roll. The guys are very busy getting ready for the comp and had also canceled some lessons due to the wind and weather forecast. Still, it was light from the SW as we got into the air.

My first pattern tow had me climbing gently in about 80 fpm at 800 feet and I gained a few hundred feet... now about 11am. My second tow was similar and I had to evade the lift to get the pattern work done. Landing, I found a few others setting up. Steve K., Joe G., Walter and Kathy, Ric N showed up, Windsor and one or two others.

I went to launch later, about 2:20 after watching a few guys soar including Zach and Heather along with Steve K. and another glider. After pinning off at 800' for my pattern tow, I found massive and widespread lift and it took me 5 minutes at least to find reliable sink to core in order to come down. I then launched again up to 2000' and got off. The sky was full of cummies and there was much more sun on the ground than I had hoped for. Lift was good and plentiful and I made my way to cloudbase at a modest 3400'. After soaring with Heather, Sunny and Kathy, Joe G. and Carter I decided the sky was darkening a bit much and headed out to land. I had 1 hour 15 minutes of sweet flying in a great sky with lots of others. Much better than I had hoped after looking at the forecasts... Eventually had 400 fpm on the averager and 3600' for the climb. About an hour after landing, the storms finally rolled in... But a great day flying at Ridgely especially considering the forecast.

Regards,

John

[Ashley Groves]

Thanks for the update.

I looked at the forecast and decided it was not worth the 2 hour drive for the gamble. Looks like I lost!

[Paul Tjaden]

Hey John, Glad you finally got some flying in. It has remained pretty rainy here but there has been some decent flying late morning into early afternoon. Gonna try out my elbow one more time tomorrow before making a final decision about the ECC.

[John Simon]

Hi Paul and Ashley,
Paul, Glad to hear you may still be coming up... hope to see you and Lauren for the Gala. Ashley... We got lucky with the weather, everyone predicted a shit day as did you. I had a truck out there I needed to pick up so gave it a run and got lucky. Fun time.


Take care,

John

[brianvh]

Crappy weather often means thunderstorms, which means instability. If you miss the rain, you get the fun stuff to play in.

[Ashley Groves]

I am all game with Isolated T-storms; good flying but watch out for OD.

The forecast was T-storms, 60% chance of rain, 10-15 MPH winds on the ground. There were multiple ways to be grounded, so it wasn't looking likely.