Highland, Friday Sept 18

[Ward Odenwald]

Predicted light surface and aloft winds coupled with a decent thermal forecast, could be good. I'll be there around 11. Ward

[Blaine]

I'm planning on being there. Leaving after work in the morning so I should be there early.

[Ward Odenwald]

Amazing! Except for two low saves, spent most of the 1:58 flight at or above 4.7K msl and climbed to cloud base multiple times. Highest climb was to 5.4K msl. The thermals were made up of tight cores that would peg the vario if you were lucky enough to bank hard to ride them up. Everyone stuck and stuck hard (Blaine, JoeG and another pilot that I haven't met). Sunny flew with a student and put on a thermalling clinic while looking down at the rest of us. Here are two screen shots from the video and I"ll post some still shots tomorrow evening. Can't fly tomorrow but the forecasts indicate that it may be an EPIC 3-PEAT.

Ward

PS: Note the corn stock bling on my rear flying wire. In some of the thermals it was snowing corn stocks!!

[Ward Odenwald]

After reaching cloud base on Friday, I would glide to other clouds with mixed results and on two attempts; most of my altitude had been squandered. Here ‘s a sequence of images from one of the low saves that started during the downwind leg of an abandoned landing pattern. As you can see from the photos, the thermal was pretty much centered over the parking lot with little or no drift detected below 3K msl. Above 3K, the core that I was clinging to most likely fused with others and near cloud base (see second image of the first post) there was lift everywhere!

Ward