Soaring

Thursday, 5 November 2009

7 days of NW - le weekend for 7 and 8 November

The forecast is for an extended period of NW - and Rob Kakebeeke may have been right that we should be tending to our equipment this weekend!

Today was the day to be flying, this picture of Table Mountain (whilst i had to source a crimping tool for the transponder antenna - thank you Sarel Oosthuizen - tells the story) What i would not give for a self launcher and an infinite sum of money to fly when the weather is up to it ;-)

The forecast looks like this

Saturday
Katabatic warm front, quasi-stationary, 292km to the NE, vertical motion -30m/hr

the frontal layer is between 5000 and 10000ft

Surface wind - 40Nw, 5000ft 70NW, 10000ft 130NW, 15000ft 150NW, 20000ft 160NW

Wave NIL

Cloud 3 - 5/8 from 20 000ft upwards to 8/8 at 40000ft (where the wind is 210kph NW)

Severe surface turbulence, moderate turbulence 6000 - 10000ft

Shear is 30ms / 4km

Max 22.2C Dewpoint 3.3C Trigger 20.4C

Expect 1.2 ms - 1.8 ms to 62000ft

Boundary layer energy 70 J/kg
Sunday

Katabatic cold front, 266km to the E, moving at 56kph towards the east, vertical motion -1036m/hr

Surface wind - 20NW, 5000ft 40NW, 10000ft NW 60, 15000ft NW 80, 20000ft 110 NW

Wave From 13600ft upwards

Cloud 8/8 from 2000ft - 30000ft (the dry and wet adiabats are closely matched from the surface to 30K)

But it keeps the windshear down to 18ms/4km

Surface turbulence remains severe

No rain on the sounding, but i would expect some

Max 12.6C Dewpoint 9.9C Trigger 13.6

Expect 0.5 ms to 3000 ft

boundary layer energy 2 J/kg

Monday, 2 November 2009

Golfing or Harvarding?

If you look carefully you can see ZS-PYC, a Phoebus parked on the 3rd fairway - the glide to FAWC was a bridge tooo far. I hate to add that i am the back seat of a K7 - we had just released overhead as the Phoebus landed and the P1 in the K7 (Jerry Bedbeder) was climbing away in the only 3m/s thermal of the day which Jac had, no doubt, kicked off in his landing.