Sunday, October 2, 2011

Blowing a gale!


Website: www.joeyglide.com.au
Facebook: Adam Woolley's Gliding Adventures

Date: 02/10/2011
Flight:  http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?dsId=2141388

Weather from www.the-white-knight-speaks.blogspot.com :  A trough is bringing extensive rain to central/northern NSW with lower falls in southern Queensland. This will clear the coast on Thursday night, bringing a southerly flow to SE Qld for Friday and the weekend.

Whilst the trough is bringing widespread rain to south eastern Queensland, falls are only expected to be 10mm or less across the Downs, but with higher falls to the south. This amount of rain is unlikely to suppress convection or cause out landing issues except in low lying areas.
Scattered Cloud @ 7000’.  Wind: 230/21(!)

Task: Kingaroy – Rosevale Strip – Kingaroy – Wondai A/F – CPN – Kumbia – Kingaroy
Stats: 232km @ 87.07kph; 24% Thermalling @ 4.1kts; 43:1 for 13km glides at an average of 67kts IAS; Deviations of 7%

The day started out with lightish winds, before growing to the predicted strength of 20kts.  The clouds starting early as RASP predicted.  Sadly though, as the Warwick State Comps were finishing and all the wind about – it was a lazy start to the day with myself being the only single seater airborne!
Straight off tow saw a solid climb to base, so I promptly headed off on track.  Instantly I noticed progress was slow, though snaking up wind made it easier to connect the lines of energy.  Today I worked a top 1/3 working band, this worked a treat – the climbs were regular and reliable.

After checking out Bruce Taylors traces from the recent state champs, I noticed he moved around the sky a lot – so I made a conscious effort to do the same.  I think it really worked for me as reflected in the glide stats.

Working cross-wind to the North was good practice for the tactical flying.  All in all, I was happy how I ran these two legs.  I shared one climb with my good friend in a K21, before taking a 40* deviation for 5km to line up a good energy line.  Pleased I did this after reviewing the trace, gave me a 50km final glide!

The glider is performing nicely with the new ASI, seem to be thermalling at 45kts now – and occasionally going up near the 50kt mark.  So potentially an under-reading instrument before.  Also, my old man and I worked on the sealing of the canopy again – with good results.  Though I think I’ll put a little more felt down, and seal up the rear O2 bottle hole to make the cockpit extremely quiet, not just quiet :)

Safe Circles,
WPP

No comments: