Edith's Gap Friday Oct. 6

[mingram]

Edith's Gap is an amazing site. With light winds it seems to work in most wind directions. The forecast was light SW, which typically means Daniels, but I followed Tom and Rick to Edith's. Tom launched first around 12pm and was got above the ridge, but high cirrus clouds shut it down. Both he and Rick landed and Andy, Joe, and myself synced up with them.

Back on top cycles were still coming in nicely. I was first to launch around 1pm and immediately caught a thermal to 4300 feet msl where I bumped against an inversion. SW wind aloft floated me to Kennedy Peak without losing much altitude. From there I bounced against the inversion until I found a good one that broke through to 5000 feet. I waited for Tom and others at Kennedy Peak and was able to easily stay high. Tom and I followed the ridge north and we shared the next thermal with a bald eagle and got over 6000 feet! The thermal after that was the really sweet one. 4 m/s and I topped out at 7400 feet msl! That's my second highest flight on the east coast! The last time I got that high was a late May/Spring flight from Woodstock topping out at 8000 feet msl. Amazing to get so high in October!

From there it was easy to cruise north along the ridge never getting below 5000 feet. But when I got to the end I should have transitioned to the western ridge to get more over the highest peak where the clouds were forming. Instead I was on the eastern ridge and couldn't quite connect. Tom and Rick flew over Strasburg and the quarry and landed near Winchester I think. Rick said his wing was talking to him a bit and reminded him that he's flying a high performance D wing.

Joe said he had his best US flight to date! Getting over 5000 feet and flying for more than 2 hours. Sweet! Not sure how Andy's flight was.

I landed in a bad spot and found it difficult to get a ride. Not even Uber or Lyft would come get met. Finally got a ride to Strasburg, then a ride back to DC. Thanks to Rick for driving my car back to Reston!

Matt

[smurfsky101]

I can't believe you got to 7k+ in OCTOBER!

Call me old fashioned but I thought that kind of altitude on the east coast was reserved for springtime flying...

[mingram]

Me too! I hadn't checked the forecast the night before and wasn't even considering flying until I saw the XCSkies GFS forecast the next morning showing 7k was possible! Wait! What? Other forecasts predicted 5k top of lift. Regardless there was a pretty good chance of it being a good day.

I was really focused on getting as high and waiting for my friends to join me so we could fly XC together. With light wind there wasn't much thermal drift so it was easy to just hang out above Kennedy Peak which was a good thermal collector since wind was from the South. I kept bumping against the inversion and was hoping to get higher. I had no idea I would get that high! I think I like altitude more than miles!

[XCanytime]

High surface temp + low dewpoint + unstable air lapse rate = high cloudbase, regardless of time of year. This ain't no normal year either . Bacil