Ridgely June 14

[carweill]

Janni and I heading to Ridgely

Carlos

[John Simon]

Zoinks!!
Heather and I arrived late, I guess around 3:45 or so. There were 3 or 4 solo gliders in the sky and they all looked to be doing OK. One was stinkin' high and appeared to be yellow. Hello Carlos! The sky looked very good and the sounding was decent but it had rained hard Sat afternoon and there was still a ton of water on the ground at the field. Janni lands and says he's been up twice and not much lift despite the nice Cu's. Soon the other gliders all come in... except Carlos. No one can find him, because he had specked out and bugged out. Solo and unafraid, going XC... Nice.

I decide to reconstitute the old and very exclusive 5 O'clock soaring society/Club. In the past it had been highly successful but it had been dormant in the last year or so due to work, injuries, and a general lack of faith. None-the-less, it suits my own internal clock as I find it tedious to arrive at the field prior to 3 or 4 anyway. Sure, there are few or no XC miles to be had, but for sheer fun and enjoyment, the big soft high late afternoon lift is quite luxurious and relaxing. It's like a spa in the sky if you will.

Kirk is interested in joining, but Janni bails despite my harassing comments and Steve K. is a believer but cannot join in and breaks down. I launch and pin off at 1600 feet as I'm in a wide area of lift. I figure I'll slowly climb to 2500 and Kirk will be off tow around then and we'll have the sky to ourselves. Alas, the climb sweetens up to 500+ fpm, smooth and wide. I am climbing in the blue and it's totally smooth. I laugh out loud and Kirk gets off tow just a few minutes later... I am at 4000+ feet and climbing like the wind. I see a tandem glider off to the East about 1.5 miles and he is very high. It appears he is above the clouds? He must have been a high tow? As I pass 5000' I see they are still above me and many of the clouds are now below me. Zoinks!

Such a smooth and large convergence. I head over to the tandem, and there are two of them now and Sunny and Jim and I fly above the clouds for 20 minutes. Kirk comes and joins us, and eventually Heather is up above the clouds with us. It is gorgeous, great visibility and smooth wide lift. I cannot stop grinning... it's truly outrageous. I fly with Heather and Sunny up above the West side of the covergence line and around and above numerous buildups, playing with my glory amongst the clouds.

Later Kirk and I have a tailchase for 20-30 minutes in, around and above another line climbing all the while as we zoom about the cotton balls. We are gliding on rails between the misty spires, up and over and round and round we go. It's dreamy, rare and beautiful...I am going to buy a camera very soon.

I finally head out to land in the still buoyant air and come down gently after more than 2:20 above it all. Kirk got more... he had to be shot down after 7:30pm. Heather got a bunch of climbs and then some great approaches... An incredible day. Wish you were all there.


John

[KirkLewis]

So awesome! Man I wish Janni had decided to go for it He seemed so bummed out.

[Dan T]

Great flight John and a terrific write up. It brought vicarious tears of joy to my eyes.

I'm back in the USA on the way home. Hopefully I'll be flying with you all next weekend.

Dan T
no longer in Baghdad

[KirkLewis]

By the way John, I remember you mentioning you thought this was the seabreeze convergence. Sounds right to me!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_breeze

Which is another reason why the 5' oclock club is awesome, because the sea breeze isn't likely to move in until latter in the day.

[John Simon]

Hi Dan,
long time. Hope to fly with you soon. Kirk, there is no doubt it was a (seabreeze) convergence. Happens somewhat often at Ridgely and is truly magic air. Great fun flying with you.


John

[KirkLewis]

Well I'm never packing up before 5 again =P

[KirkLewis]

By the way I found an interesting article about how the sea breeze and cloud streets interact:

http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/~fovell/ASres ... bfhcr.html

This sounds exactly like what was happening, as they were forming in a line. So, this means that optimal conditions for this sort of thing should be when winds are somewhat perpendicular to the coast... coming from the north to west.

[lbunner]

Did anyone ever find Carlos?

[carweill]

Well,
It was a good day but you had to have patience. Kirk kept trying and was rewarded with a great flight. I had 2 flights. The first was at 2pm made it to cloud base over the town of Ridgely, only 3k and lost everything on the way back. The second was about 3:30pm and keep climbing slowly to 4700 at the same place I the last flight so I decided to keep going. I went down to 4k and found another that took me to cloud base again. This is where a made I big blunder; I followed the road I would recognized and left the clouds! I did not realize then there was a potential for convergence, so only 9 miles. Based on reports it even got better later. I enjoyed both flights anyway.

Carlos

[Paul Tjaden]

I had a similar if somewhat less spiritual flight several years ago at Ridgely. I believe it was at the Fly In cause Rob Kells was there with demos and I wanted to fly the T-2. If my memory is correct, Matthew had taken it up earlier and hogged all the lift (or so I thought). Still I decided to go ahead late in the day and take a sled ride. After releasing from tow I cruised a bit to the east where a line of late day clouds had set up and proceeded to cruise up and down the side of them for a couple of hours in baby butt smooth air. Very fun! We have had a few incredible tandems the last few days with soft cumulous clouds from 2,000 up to over 5,000 feet. It is incredible to climb up through these valleys and canyons of water vapor and then glide back down through them again.

Wonder what the common folks are doing today?

Paul

[KirkLewis]

I only just got to cloud base for the first time a month ago, so I was pretty blown away. I expect this to happen all the time now