Thursday promised to be a second day of good flying. With fog in
the morning reinforcing the idea that the winds would be light:

The Oz Report World Headquarters at sunrise on Thursday. Photo by Gary Osoba

With over a dozen pilots here, choosing Quest Air even with Wills Wing Demo Days
happening just to the south, there was a lot of activity at launch. Joe Bostik
had written to say that some of those launching from Wallaby would be doing a
six turnpoint task up highway 33 to its intersection with 474. I called a task
to the south to Dean Still and 33 over to Wallaby and back to Quest. The idea
was to run into the Wallaby pilots and join them for part of the task.

I launched first while the others were holding back under the supposition that
the lift was weak and the inversion low. I pinned off at 800' AGL as we were
going up 1000 fpm. The lift wasn't as strong as I had hoped, but I hung on in
the weak stuff searching for better even while low. It must have taken half an
hour to get up over 2,000'.

Gary Osoba was pulled up next in Steve Arndt's Magic Dragon:

Photo by Gary Osoba.

I climbed out to over 4,000' west of Quest with a 4 mph east wind. Heading south
east I didn't find any lift and had to come back for another try south of Quest.
There was enough lift to get up there and start heading south to test out the
day. So far it had been very light.

No one else wanted to go with me or even later (other than Jamie, who couldn't
get anyone to go with her). I worked my way slowly south hoping to run into the
Wallaby pilots but thinking that it was unlikely that they took on the task
after all.

I found good lift just north of the Seminole glider port. I had been flying with
numerous sailplanes that were having a difficult time getting very high. The
inversion was thick, but I kept finding enough weak lift to keep going.

I headed for the turnpoint at 474 and 33 hoping to find some friends, but there
was no one there. I should have tuned my radio to their frequency to see what
was up. I turned around to go back to Quest given the weak conditions, but I
hadn't hit any lift since leaving Seminole and didn't find any on the way back
either even though I took a different route.

I found a bit of lift at 800' over the glider port but it didn't last. There was
plenty of activity on the runway, but they held up a tow and let me land.

It looks like we will have light winds for the coming week.