The flight
here.

SPOT here.

A few days out it looked like Thursday (the day before the Solstice) would be
the start of a whole bunch of good days with the high pressure centered in the
Gulf of Mexico and the wind rotating clockwise around it. Like this (this
morning):

The forecast for the afternoon looked like this:

Ooh, this is as good as it gets in Texas for long distance flights, still I was
nervous about the forecast. Would we have cu's and cloud streets?

The over running was already here at dawn, just like in Zapata. There sure were
clouds. But would they be there later?

The t-skew said that we had an inversion here in Georgetown and that it would
continue until 1 PM. Would the cloud streets I saw in the morning dry up as the
cloud base rose?

I was worried that the lift at 11 AM wouldn't be enough to keep us up, so called
for a postponement of the launch until 1 PM.

Ben Dunn showed up along with his boss, Andy, and took the other Falcon 4 195
while Chris opted for a flight on his T2C.

I was first off and stayed on tow for five and a half minutes before I pinned
off at 850 feet AGL. The thermal was only 140 fpm, but it was going up, it was
wide, and I did not want to be on tow any longer.

The wind was 18 mph out of the south but the air and the lift was smooth. I
stayed in what I had as I was concerned that with such a strong wind it would be
hard to find the lift down low.

Meanwhile Ben Dunn had broken a weaklink down low but was climbing behind me.
Andy decided after watching our tows to not risk it.

This towing with a weak trike in windy conditions on big Falcons is not for the
weak of heart or inexperienced pilots. It is not fun. The bar is stuffed and you
are fighting the glider that wants to go a lot slower.

The cu's had thinned out considerably but it was possible to see some cloud
streets. I wanted to stay as far east as I could to keep away from the lakes and
Fort Hood. The idea was to stay east of I35 until past Belton, where I35 turns
further east toward Waco.

Ben got low and further west so I told him that it was still okay to go up the
west side of I35. I headed east to the south east of Belton going for a big dark
cloud. Unfortunately, it didn't work even though I tried it twice so I headed
out east past the shadow and finally felt a little something at 750'.

Ben found lift behind me while I struggled to keep from landing as I drifted
past Belton.  I had to go back up wind against a 17 mph in a Falcon 4 195
to find the better lift under a forming cloud and that got me up and high and
away from civilization. Too many small fields.

The next stop was the Temple airfield. Ben was low at the airfield ready to
land. I was high coming in west of him and east of the lakes. Ben ran into 700
fpm and climbed to 6,000'.

There was a nice cloud street out of Temple and I was just floating along high
and going down wind with an indicated 20+ mph tail wind. The Falcon 4 195 looks
awfully good when you're doing that.

The next waypoint on our route through and around the airspaces was McGregor
another thirty kilometers to the north. There was a nice sparse cloud street to
it which I was under but Ben was further east thinking that we had to stay near
I35. He hadn't downloaded the waypoints correctly.

The cu's died past McGregor and Ben got low just before it and landed on the
south side. I was high past the town but decided to go land with him. It was
easier said than done against the wind. I flew back across part of the town
creeping very slowly forward. When I got above the field that Ben had landed in
and circled around and then went to the downwind side ready to come in but
suddenly I couldn't move forward and was coming straight down toward some power
lines. For a few seconds it got scary but finally I was able to move forward and
land without incident (these are Falcons after all) in the field.

Looks like we'll try for the record on Saturday (Mike can't tow us early on
Friday). The forecasts are incredible. There was a lot of rain from Waco north
yesterday and that may have been why there were no cu's north of McGregor. There
were still plenty of them by Georgetown when we got back at 7 PM.