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Mick Howard <mhoward1> writes:

The weather forecasts on Wednesday and Thursday for Saturday were
looking encouraging for a decent XC with good lift predicted by Dr Jack's and
around 10mph on the ground and 17-18mph at the top of lift with high cloudbase.
However by Saturday morning the forecasts had changed. The latest forecasts
showed lighter winds both on the ground and aloft which would have meant for a
good triangle or out and return day except for the predicted thunderstorms
coming in from the Gulf. Actually when I was leaving home I could see and hear
the thunderstorms building and later, around 10:30am as I arrived at Gloster,
the weather forecast on the radio had increased the chances of thunderstorms to
50%. It was also clearly obvious that the building cells would blow up and over
develop rapidly.

My glider was already in the hanger fully rigged with instruments on ready to go
which was the condition I left it when I last flew at Gloster a couple of weeks
ago. Not having to rig the glider made for a nice start to the day though I had
to repair my harness as the pullback cord on the slider had broken the last time
I flew. Robin arrived when we were debating which runway to use as the wind was
switching directions. We decided on the north south runway launching to the
north.

I launched first while Robin was still setting up. I was a little nervous at
launch after having some pretty rowdy air the last couple of times I flew there,
but I settled down as soon as we were in the air as conditions were smooth and
benign, despite the abundant cumulus clouds. It was a smooth tow and I stayed on
the line until Gregg waived me off close to cloudbase, which was just over
4000ft.

I boated around at cloudbase just north at I10 where I could stay clear of the
sky divers and where I had a bird’s eye view of operations on the ground. I
waited while Gregg landed and parked off the runway until a motorized glider
back taxied and launched and then watched as Gregg back taxied to tow Robin. I
observed most of the tow but then lost sight of Robin.

After seeing thunderstorms to the south including multiple lightning strikes I
was not keen to hang around too long and by this time I had moved slightly
further to the northwest, but still hanging around debating what to do and where
to go. After a while Robin came on the radio and said that he was over Sealy. I
found out later that I mistakenly thought that Sealy was to the north east of
Gloster so I started heading East but was a little concerned about a towering
cloud that was likely to dump at anytime, so after flying east for a short time
I decided to head north west to get away from the approaching cells that were
dumping heavy rain.

Considering I thought Sealy was not where I thought it was in relation to
Gloster I had no idea where Robin was. I got low a couple of times (well 1500ft
is not that low but enough to get my attention) but managed to find climbs when
it mattered. Except for staying clear of the storms that were forming a line to
our south and a cell to our east I wasn’t in a hurry as I was still debating
what to do. I was debating whether to head east between the storm cell that was
off to the east and the line of storms to the south. I thought that I could try
for a nice triangle around the storms and get back to Gloster, but then, I
thought, what if I couldn’t get around the storms? I was debating this for some
time so I was not in a hurry to continue heading northwest.

We were both calling our positions over the radio but it was sometime before we
eventually teamed up which was north of HW290 when Robin spotted me and said he
was 2 kms behind, then I saw the slick profile of his wing racing directly
towards me as I was climbing close to cloudbase.

I felt really good and at ease as the air was smooth and there was lift
everywhere, except for one problem, the tube to my camelback had detached
shortly after launch so I didn’t have drinking water and I didn’t take a drink
before I launched so I was a little parched to say the least!

As we continued northwest Robin said that his 6030 had locked up due to low
battery so now he was without a vario and altimeter. He asked me to not fly
close to him while he fumbled in his harness to find a mini vario which had been
there for years. It seemed to take a while before Robin got sorted out but then
his discovered that the mini vario was faulty. It would beep to indicate a climb
up to about 100fpm and then go silent as if he was no longer in lift, so it took
Robin a while to figure out how to interpret the beeps and using the birds to
help him stay I lift. I had moved a little north trying to find good lift to
mark for Robin but I lost sight of him and as it happened, he didn’t need me
anyway because the next time he called his position he was at cloudbase.

Robin asked what big towns are around here?, but it seemed there was nothing
obvious except for I could see the small town of Lexington on my GPS. We were
still unsure of each other’s position, though from the description of land
features we thought that we were close by and only separated from view by the
clouds. My last climb was with the bar stuffed as I raced to the edge of the
cloud to beat the cloud suck and then I climbed 500 ft or so up the side of the
cloud (above base) to around 6500ft. We had decided to land as Lexington when we
were approximately 8 miles out and once I got in front of the cloud I could see
Robin a mile or two to my west. We had both decided on the same field on the
south side of town and Robin reached the town ahead of me and much lower and was
scouting around describing the stores etc. to check out where we could get a
beer. Then he said he was going to watch the football game for a while and just
boated around over the town. I had been spiraling down but I was still about
2000 ft above Robin as I watched him checking out the town.

I watch Robin’s landing approach and pointed out a flag on a building to give me
wind direction and immediately after landing he said the wind was in the
direction he landed at around 2mph which of course took any guesswork out of my
landing approach – thanks Robin.

We moved to the edge of the field next to the shade of trees near the main road.
Robin called Gregg to give him our position and Kimberly and Kim were kind
enough to volunteer to come out to get us. We derigged the gliders and walked
across the road to the store to get supplies and enjoyed a couple of cool beers
under the shade tree and enjoyed a sandwich before Kim and Kimberly arrived.

I don’t remember the exact times but I believe we got back to Gloster around 9pm

As per the info below I flew for 3hours 39 minutes and we flew over 73 miles
straight line distance and my best climb was around 2:40pm when I hooked a
700fpm climb. So, all in all it wasn’t for bad for just boating around.

Even though the wind drift was not strong enough for a big distance flight and
even though cloudbase is usually higher, we could have easily flown 100-150miles
yesterday. Robin getting severely handicapped by not having a vario/altimeter
and given that I had no drinking water and the fact that we had not formally
arranged a retrieve, nor decided where to fly, we made the right decision to
wind it down at Lexington.

Big thanks to Gregg for the great tow to cloudbase

Big thanks to Kim and Kimberly for coming out to retrieve