I was torn between going for it today or tomorrow. The forecast
(NAM) in the morning was for no cu's or very thin ones. But then they started
appearing before 10 AM. Now we had seen these early morning cu's before, and
they had all disappeared later in the mornings, to give us blue days, so it
wasn't clear that these cu's would we staying with us.

By 10:30 the cu's looked a lot more substantial (but still thin) than they had
on previous days. Also the wind was blowing a lot stronger than predicted for
later in the day, so I decided to go for it. Everything was already setup and
ready to go at a moment's notice.

Rhett Radford hauled me up at 10:45 AM. I pinned off just below cloud base at
2,300' (I like to get towed high if I launch this early). I was right under a
reasonable looking cloud street.

The lift was weak but good for this early in the morning. Cloud base was nice
and high for this time of the day. I drifted and climbed in the 13 mph south
southeast wind to over 3,000'. The drift and cloud street was aiming at just
west of Leesburg toward a large swampy area 25 km away, so I knew that I wanted
to jump over to the west to the next street as soon as it looked good.

I jumped over just north of Mascot and found lift under thin cu's. Moving a
little further to the west under the cu's I found 170 fpm to 3,400' and almost
cloud base. But there were no cu's ahead for me.

I made a long jump, 6 km further to the west, which is the direction I wanted to
go anyway to get under a few ragged cu's. Down to 1,000' AGL I got under the
cu's and worked myself back up again. I was in perfect position for crossing the
Turnpike and the swamp to the north of it to get lined up with highway 301 which
heads north (pretty much the wind direction - 171 and 10 mph).

The only trouble was there were no cu's to the north, unless you count about 50
km to the north. The cu's had also dried up behind me. Jamie Shelden, John
Chambers, Rich, and Olaf were thinking about launching after me, but they were
getting discouraged by the disappearing clouds.

I was only able to climb back to 2,600' 6 km south of the Turnpike. Not seeing
any better options I headed for the driest fields I could find north of the
Turnpike but before the swamp seeing if I could blunder into a thermal. I found
bits and pieces but nothing substantial enough to stay with. I landed right next
to the Okahumpka service plaza. I had only been in the air for an hour.

Jamie and the crew didn't launch until about 1 PM. By then the sky had refilled
with cu's. In fact small wispy cu's started forming over me soon after I landed.
Perhaps I should have just stayed back where I was under the last cu's maybe
even gone south to a wisp or two and waited for the day to change.

They were able to get up and head north and by the time I got back to Quest they
were just south of the Turnpike. The cu's thinned out and disappeared for them
also and they were able to get about 40 miles from Quest Air.

Pilots from Wallaby including Tom Lanning, Mike Barber, Tyson Richmond, and Ken
Martin did out a returns from Wallaby to Quest Air. They launched about 1:30 PM.
The wind had died down enough in the late afternoon to allow them to head back
to the south.

http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/para/flightinfo.html?flightId=-617188494

http://xc.dhv.de/xc/modules/leonardo/index.php?name=leonardo&op=show_flight&flightID=133555

http://www.xcontest.org/world/en/flights/detail:davisstraub/7.4.2010/14:44

Well, we'll see what Thursday brings. So far I am happy with my decision not to
really press it on Wednesday and wait and see if Thursday is the better day.