Wharton Sunday 10 May

Flight and/or trip reports
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BobFisher
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri May 15, 2020 9:56 pm

Wharton Sunday 10 May

Post by BobFisher »

Since this weekend looks like it will be stormed out, I thought I’d keep the pot boiling with a flight report from last Sunday. I didn’t time my flight but about an hour and a half and I landed only because I was thirsty. I had discovered slime in my harness water bladder – anyone know a good solution? Bleach hasn’t worked.
The start of my launch was eventful because of a miscommunication when my request to have the cart lined up was interpreted as a request to launch. The cart rolled out with me yelling “No, no” but I didn’t pull the release and it quickly lined itself up and I had a good launch. Thanks Serge for the additional assist at the wing tip. The lesson to be remembered here is that the launch person giving signals to the tug is on point for everything that happens and particularly must be absolutely sure that the pilot is ready to go by having a short but clear conversation before calling for “all out”. There is NEVER a hurry to launch.
Tiki circled me up through multiple thermals before signaling me off but I’m not Robin and I habitually choose to get my money’s worth rather than take an unnecessary risk of a re-light. At release height I found the thermals to be “bubbly”. Good sized areas of lift containing uneven thermals but easy to climb in if you just kept circling. By the time I had climbed out to about 3500ft It was more organized lift of about 350fpm and that proved typical for the day.
I never made cloudbase because the clouds where I was were all just caps on the lift and not working. The highest I got was 4700 ft (several times) where the lift was about 100fpm. I estimated cloudbase at 5K. I headed upwind and found that the cap clouds marked lift lines and that the lift was streeting quite strongly. At one point I flew upwind straight and level between two clouds about half a mile apart and gained 400ft. This was exceptional but I typically only lost a few hundred feet between clouds. I worked my way upwind to the center of Wharton and climbed out there back to 4500ft but decided to fly back because I was getting tired. I was spending my time between 4000 and 4700. On the way back I had lots of height I needed to lose so headed south across the streets and lost maybe 1500ft in the sink, arriving at the street a little SE of the airport at about 1800ft and then I stupidly thermalled back up to 3800 just because I found nice lift – you know how that goes… I then had to find sink to get down in and pulled my flaps all the way, got partly out of prone to relax and circled down to circuit height. You are getting the idea what sort of day it was.
At take-off the wind had been very variable and we often waited for it to not be across the field before launching, so I had my eye on the windsock as I descended to start my landing pattern. It was limp and I came in over the hangars near the runway at maybe 150 ft in Tiki’s normal pattern with the intention of landing out by the cone. For a nil-wind landing, I wanted my anticipated semi-crash to be not-well-observed. As I turned onto final I was preparing to get out of prone and increase my speed to bleed off some height when I saw to my alarm that the windsock was filling quite strongly with wind that was across and slightly tailwind (Northeasterly). I instinctively stayed in prone to keep my height and staring obsessively at the windsock continually adjusted my approach to veer as close as I dared towards the runway and when I judged I was at a suitable height turned about 110degrees back into wind, got out of prone and made a textbook landing into wind only 100 yards from the trailer. A nice end to a very enjoyable flight and the summer is just beginning!

Bob F

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