Met outlook

Time is few, so i am busy setting up for the Nats (and on OLC i can see the flying already going on at Gariep and New Tempe). The weather outlook for the contest period is very promising, so here goes:

Jan 2Excellent soaring day (the best, but then, it is the official practise day!!!)
3/8 at 16000ft; westerly 30kph dropping to 20 above 10000ft Max 35, trigger 32 4 - 5ms to 17000ft
Jan 3 - race day 1
Excellent 3/8 cu at 16000 - 19000ft; WNW at 40kph, Max 34.2, trigger at 31.3, 19000ft at 4 - 6 ms, with base at 16000ft
Jan 4 - race day 2
Excellent soaring, spread out? 5/8 1600 - 19000ft, wind W50kph - 3/8 cu at 16000ft Max temp 32.5, trigger at 29.4, 4 - 5.5ms to 19000ft
Jan 5 - race day 3
Blue to 14500ft - Wind W20, 31.7 with a trigger of 28.1, dp 1.1C3- 4 ms
Jan 6 - race day 4blue to 16500ft with a WSW wind of 20kph, Max 32.8, dp -3 trigger 29.4, 3.5 - 4.5ms to 16500ft
Jan 7 - race day 5
Bleu to 16000ft with a W wind at 20kph, Max 30.5, dp 3.1, trigger 27.5 3.5 - 4ms to 16000ft
Jan 8 - race day 6 OOPS
3/8 13600 - 19000ft with thermal tops at 12600ft, with wind NW 20 increasing with altitude, Ordinary storms cells possible, 27.4 dp 9.9 and trigger 26.6, expect 2 - 2.5ms to 11000ft
Jan 9 - race day 7
3/8 cloud from 11700 - 16500ft with a NW at 20kph, ordinary storm cells possible, hail possible, 27.8 dp 9.2, trigger at 26, 3 - 3.8 ms to 16000ft 3/8 cu bases at 13800ft tops at 16500ft
Jan 10 - race day 83/8 from 11600ft, tops 16500, thermal tops at 10500ft, wind NWN 30kph, ordinary storm cells forecasted, 26.5, dp 12, trigger 24.8, 2 - 2.5 ms to 10800ft with AC 3/8
from 12000ft with tops at 16800
Jan 11 - race day 9
3/8 11500ft tops at 14500ft, wind NW40 (W60 at 15000ft), storms cells possible, 28.4 dp 10.6, trigger 26.6, 3/8 AC from 13200 - 14200ft, 3 - 3.5ms to 13000ft
Jan 12 - race day 10
BLeu, wind NW30, thermals to 13800ft, 30, dp 6.6, trigger 27.6, expect 3 - 3.5ms to 13800ft

It is only a forecast ;-)

EY

Merry Christmas and A HAPPY NEW YEAR

To all of you a Merry Christmas and a VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR. May all your thermals come true ;-) (and may all your ridges work!!!). And thank you for all the support in the past year.
Wedged between work, family (SO DEAR) and friends (SO PRECIOUS - and we (as in the family) had a few from far away this Christmas, for which we are thankful) and festivities (so necessary ;-) there was time to fit in a flight or two - yesterday was a trickyish ridge day (with some strong thermals - upto 3ms on the averager - which yours truly took under the pretext of practising for the shortly upcoming nationals; as well as wave - from early on, as Rudi Schukes DID NOT report ;-) and late - when i took a weak thermal over the airfield (waiting for a powerpilot exercising "simulated" forced landings) to connect weak wave from 2000ft agl to climb away - the valley is just so wonderful! and always full of surprises!
The flying was real fun, with KLLR notching up 810km at 134kph, a real achievement if you bear in mind that KS outlanded not far from where I did right at the beginning of the season. Those little (and they are real little) foothills don't work - if you are down to them only a thermal (in the valley) will save the day. KS was so low running the ridge that it prompted a distressed phone call by the paragliding boys to supremo Alan O'Regan.
So in a few days time i hope to be posting from a (drying-out) New Tempe (where it is very wet at the moment).
Merry Christmass and a Happy New Year

EY

ANGLE OF ATTACK

I copy an important r.a.s. (hopefully the author won't mind me spreading his message).
I also have to refer to the blogg kept by Tim McAllister for the NZ GP - it is really good
http://timmcallister.blogspot.com/

Bill Daniels had the following to say
"The threads on this subject [angle of attack] has uncovered something that gives me chills.
Internationaly, gliding has an abominable safety record. Many fatal accidents have as their root cause, failure by the pilot to maintain flying speed or, stated more directly, control his angle of attack. Clearly, based on these r.a.s threads on the subject, some do not understand AOA in some fundamental way and that's chilling.
Controlling airspeed is simply not good enough - it's too abstract, too easy to triviallize, too easy to misunderstand the significance of it.
Safety committees and organizations need to take this to hart. Here is a root cause of our most dangerous accidents. The awareness of and understanding of AOA has somehow slipped through the cracks. Slay this dragon, and our accident numbers will look far better.
If the concept and practice of controlling angle of attack is not absolutely ingrained in a pilot, the probability of an accident is non-trivial - in fact, sooner or later, it's a near certainty. Awareness of AOA should never be far from a pilots consiousness.
Controlling angle of attack is so fundamental to being a pilot that it's staggering to think that it's possible to become one without it being hammered into them until it's as instinctive as walking. Flying an aircraft without this level of understanding is like being the captain of a ship without understanding what makes it float.
As pilots, we do not fly the cockpit, the fuselage or the empenage - we fly the wing. The wing is really the only thing that does fly, the rest is just baggage.
Read Jim Webb's truly excellent book "Fly the wing". http://www.amazon.com/Fly-Wing-James-Webb/dp/0813805414
Or equally good, Wolfgang Langewiesche's "Stick and Rudder". You can read it free on line at Google Books.
Read these books - please! There is simply no subject in aviation that is more fundamental or important to your survival.
Bill Daniels"

EY