Contour flying in Chile

... some of our pilots in the Western Cape do a lot of it, so the rest of us can immediately appreciate and admire a master at work in ridge flying - this is the map and the barogram from a flight by Carlos Roca V in Chile - the barogram shows a lot more green than we are accustomed to!



The flight was 852km - in essence a perpetual beat up ;-)
http://www3.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?flightId=1487314966

EY

Lightning in the Peninsula

... got the lightning bit right (thanks to roab) in the Saturday forecast.

"Thunderbolt: The hot weather led to a spectacular display of lightning on the way to Cape Point."
Photo: Chad Chapman, Cape Times

the Gauntlet forecast

For tomorrow's monthly club contest: the weather forecast:

the gauntlet prediction Saturday has a high dewpoint, with a northerly upper flow and plenty of cloud - quite a change to the weather we have been having. Surface wind - SE 10, 5000ft N 10,10000ft N 30, 15000ft N 40, 20000ft N30 [Martin knows where to go in the Northerlies
Cloud 3 - 5/8 from 9000ft to 38 000f, with 5/8 consentrated from 11000 to 20000ft [the skies are dark!!] with a prediction for lightning at 12 - 15 000ft and hail!!! with the possibility for ordinary cells, but the dry microburst potential is low (too moist for strong convective gusts) (i now have a clever dry microburst potential predictor in the beta version 6 of raob. No precipitation is predicted by raob, but NOAA shows some!! This is probable with the high surface dewpoint (17C)
Max 29.5C Dewpoint 15.9C Trigger 31.3C Expect little lift to 3200ft (there is a low level inversion

Sunday looks like a more classic W - NW blue day (with clouds probable on the front ridge - which will be working very well - saddle up for a nice 800k plus flight - and get going early, it may blow out)
Surface wind - W10, 5000ft WNW 30, 10000ft WNW 50, 15000ft W 60, 20000ft W 60
Wind shear is lowish 10ms per 4km and Dry microburst is low
Wave [there is wave, but the beta version will not show it :(
Cloud BLUE
Max 31.2 Dewpoint 13.4 Trigger 29Expect 2.5 ms - 3.5 ms to 10000ft
So - at the moment not so good for tomorrow, but SUPER for Sunday (one of those saloon of last chance opportunities for a 1000 late in the season)
EY

EX in Vinon

... talking about traveling, I haven't been to Vinon, but i have flown a lot in EX (in Italy and Poland) and Volker Fiebig gave me a video of EX in Vinon ...

... a travel blog

Not all of life is gliding! Dear friends of ours have been on a world trip since the middle of last year , and Peter keeps an erudite blog - it is more than worth the read - a Graham Greene of the 21st century in the making. The link, appropriately, is http://changeinplans.net/
EY

OUCH!!

Accidents are never nice. Flying at Welkom we heard that a pristine DG got blown away in a storm at Gariep. Chris Way sent me this picture. Storms really do generate an amazing amount of energy. As you can see it was not a flying accident, the canopy cover is still on.

.. upping the ante

Down under they are still flying (as they are in Gariep, as well - it seems 133 (Mannie) has relocated there - he flew another 1000km triangle last weekend).
But really outdoing everyone this season is Terry Cubley (who flew in the standard class in Rieti) with a declared 1056 km flight in a LS3, giving him a 977 OLC points, (966 for the triangle) a massive score for a thermic (even if a seabreeze assisted the last leg)!!! Terry, somewhat laconically, commented on OLC,

"Blue for the first leg then good cu on the long leg. A quiet glide home, using a sea breeze to aid a little, Hard work but good fun"

"hard work" - certainly an understatement.

The flight is at
http://www3.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?flightId=705189638

EY