Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Downwind is Upwind

Some days are just unusual and today was one of those days. It started when I picked up a hitch-hiker on the entrance ramp to the highway near home. We stowed his plastic-bag covered luggage in the back and hit the road. He was heading to Burlington VT from the cape. He was pleasant to talk with even if his hygiene wasn't. He gave me some tips on hitchhiking, we talked about various things including his experiences in the MIT soaring club before I dropped him off at Springfield VT, two hours closer to his destination.

Rhett was already towing pilots looking for smooth conditions when I arrived at Morningside. After the required socializing, Dave, Michael, Kirin, Peter K, and myself started setting up our gliders. It was soon obvious that the wind prediction was unfortunately accurate; southeast around 8 mph on the surface and northwest around 10 mph at 5000 feet. It was strange launching in the same direction the clouds were drifting! I knew it would be hard determining where thermals were feeding from and where they would form a cloud. The climbs were good (200-400 fpm) but broken by the shearing action of the wind shift. Still I climbed right to cloudbase after releasing.

I lost Dave while I was climbing so I eventually flew back to join Michael. Although Michael doesn't fly with a radio, we talked earlier about flying to Keene and back, trying to fly "downwind" both ways. Michael was much higher and took off towards Keene so I figured he was on his way. The climb fizzled early so I moved on. I found a climb down low just south of Morningside that was drifting to the south! As I climbed I started drifting back to the north and then back to the south again. Funky. I reached cloudbase over Charlestown and was still looking for Michael. I finally saw him north of Morningside. What's he doing over there? (I later found out that he turned around much earlier when he failed to find anything interesting.) I did a nice long glide back to Morningside that started out with a head wind and then turned into a tailwind. I met up with Dave for a slow climb east of Morningside that only postponed our return to earth.

I grabbed some water, helped Kirin launch, and mounted up for another go. This time I found some weak and broken lift that turned into stronger and devil-inspired lift. I warned Dave, who was on tow, to stay away from the crap I was in. Dave found a nicer climb to the west of Morningside and I flew in far below him and still found it working. Once back at cloudbase Dave and I decided to fly to Ascutney and back. On the way there we both noticed the serious shading caused by the latest pulse of cloud development. We flew over the southeast corner of the mountain and then headed back. I basically had a dead-air glide under a mostly blue sky to the "red barn field" on Route 12A. As usual, something was lifting off has I cleared the treeline to my intended LZ. I setup for a crosswind landing, dove close to the tall trees on the north side and zoomed into the field. Dave setup a nice approach and came in minutes later.

Michael was nice enough to drive my truck over and Dan, who flew at Mount Ascutney, stopped by on his way home. Dave and I talked with the son-in-law of the land owner who rode up on a sharp looking motorcycle. He was coming over to help with the haying in the next field over. A short time later, Dave and I had to quickly move our gliders when the crew drove out with several loads of hay.

A while later, Dan, Dave, Julie, Michael, and I watched the clouds reform and drift north and south at the same time while we had dinner on the deck at the Indian Shutters restaurant. Although I only flew for a couple of hours and didn't go very far, it was still a fun and interesting day.

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