It rained hard at time during Thursday night. Friday morning it was socked in, fog and later in the morning thick dark low clouds. It wasn't until afternoon that the clouds started to break up and it looked like indeed as Dr. Jack/RUC predicted we would get 300-400 fpm to 3,000'.

I set up the Wills Wing T2 144 after 1 PM as the sun began hitting the ground. There were only a few of us around include Paris Williams who would be flying a borrowed Aeros Combat L 13.

I got setup up on the grass runway by myself and had Zack pull me into the air. The rest of the pilots were still setting up.  There were a few little low cu's in the sky and plenty of sun shine. It was smooth coming out of the field indicating light to no lift. The tug which would tow me up at 800 fpm in neutral air was doing about 600 fpm.

We went through some areas of reasonable lift, but I held on to 2,000' and got off in neutral air. I didn't want to get off early when there was lift, as it still seemed light and I wanted the chance that altitude gave me to find some reasonable lift.

It didn't find any lift until I was down to 1,300' and then it was light and broken. Welcome back to Ridgely. After half an hour I landed not finding much more.

The pilot who was pulled up after me, was still in the air, so I decided to give it another try. This time I let off in lift next to the cu's at over 2,000' and sure enough there was lift to stay up in especially as I drifted over to and under the darker cu's. The wind was out of the west at 5 mph.

I was able to climb to 2,500' and kept finding lift heading over to the town of Ridgely three miles from the airfield. The lift was light after the cu's blew past but it was enough to stay up in. The other pilot came over and thermalled and we were just hanging out as the cu's thinned out. We were too low to go any where (and still be able to make it back to the flight park) but we weren't going down.

Paris came over and I decided to head back toward the flight park as I wasn't getting much. There was a solitary cu, just a wisp, just before the Race Track road (the road to the airfield) intersection that comes off the highway out of Ridgely. I had found good lift in this area earlier in this flight along a tree line, so I headed for it. I found lift at 900' above a yellow house and started climbing.

The lift was weak but consistent, so I was happy. The lift here is so much fun to fly in. I didn't have anywhere to go.

I climbed up as I watched Paris and the other pilot get lower out over Ridgely. Finally Paris came running to where I was and came in 500' under me. I just kept turning and watching the little cloud above. It was the only one around as the fields were sun baked below.

The other pilot didn't have enough altitude to make it to where Paris and I were circling and he went and landed back at the flight park. Our lift was slowing down but we kept hanging with it.

Our lift seemed to slow and Paris went over a few hundred yards to find some other lift. I saw that he had found something and came in over him, to find 400 fpm at 2,500'. This was good, strong and consistent. I looked around and noticed that it was dark to the west. There was a high cloud coming from the west and there were cu's below it and over us.

The lift got really good and we were at the edge of the sunlight. It looked like the upper cloud was going to block all the sunlight. The lift was getting too good.

I called up Belinda on the radio and she said that she could hear thunder. The storm that was predicted for the afternoon was coming, although I wasn't sure how quickly. I had been concentrating on the little thermal that we had been in and wasn't paying attention to the big picture. Now it looked like we were on the edge of the storm.

I pulled out of the thermal and raced to the east end of the runway to find an area of sink. As soon as I could find some sink, and now the lift was almost every where even though all the ground was shaded, I cored and cored and cored down. I had not idea how fast it was coming. Paris was hanging out near by but I didn't see him.

As I got close to the ground I could see that it was calm, no gust front yet, so it was easy to land at about 4 PM, cart the glider to its setup area behind my trailer, stake it down, put the cover on, and batten down everything before the gust front. Paris landed just before it with the lightning flashing a few miles away.

We had a good rain and there continued to be strong thunderstorm warnings until 8 PM.

Tomorrow the forecast is for good lift and a high cloud base, 5000' to 7000', but a strong west wind.

Even better lift conditions on Sunday, the first day of the meet, with lighter northwest winds.