The forecast for Sunday was for light northeast winds and no cu's. The RUC
forecast said we'd get to 3,000', but the NAM said a bit higher. A typical
cloudless day after the front came through on Saturday with its pounding
southwest winds.
I was off first at 12:20 and I don't recall finding any lift while on tow. After
I pinned off at 2,500' I searched around then went over to the bus parking lot
by the school just south of highway 50. The lift was almost 200 fpm as I climbed
to back to 2,800'.
As the lift gave out I just felt around in the area looking for zero or a little
better. I was just trying to feel the air a little bit here and a little bit
there to map it out mentally. Jochen was dropped off just northwest of me and
came back toward me, but I really wasn't turning in anything useful. He went
southeast while I continued over to the new high school in the middle of
Groveland, which looked to me like a likely source, a huge field of concrete,
bricks, and asphalt.
Jochen never found any lift and landed. He radioed up and said he would wait for
an hour to try again.
I searched out sources of lift in the neighborhood. I checkout out other large
areas of concrete, and those seemed to work. I followed some buzzards that were
thousands of feet below me and when they found lift I joined them in that. I
headed north (the direction of our task) to see if there was lift out in the
suburbs. Not finding much, I headed back and found more lift around Groveland
and to the west.
After an hour and twenty minutes I decided to go and land. No one to play with
(no one else had launched). But as I got low over Quest Air I saw Jochen moving
his glider to the south to get ready to launch. Oops, time to try to get back up
again. I moved over to the northwest corner of Quest Air and started working
weak lift (46 fpm).
Jochen was pulled into the air but broke his weak link low and was turning in
200 fpm below me to the north, west of 33. After a while and searching around a
bit more I saw a bird climbing next to me much faster. I flew over to the bird
and rapidly climbed to 3,800'.
Jochen lost the lift far below me and started to search around. I was high and
just went going off in any direction because it looked like he was going down
and I might as well land also. He got very low and was circling on the upwind
side of the field west of the club house. Soon I noticed that he wasn't landing
(as it was a bad place to be if we was going to land going to the north). He was
climbing. I found lift above him and we climbed up to 3,500' before deciding to
head north.
I headed off north northwest toward our turnpoint at highway 33 and the Turnpike
and Jochen headed due north toward the Turnpike. After a seven kilometer glide I
started working 35 fpm at 1,700'. Jochen had a good glide but then hit big sink
and had to work unorganized lift low, just as I did.
As I worked to stay up Jochen said that he was now high enough to get back to
Quest Air and was heading back. I stayed in the weak lift for thirteen minutes
then headed back with just enough altitude to make it. One kilometer later I
found 500 fpm, the best lift of the day and it was easy to make it back. Jochen
had landed, his glider ready for the big day tomorrow. I came over Quest Air at
a thousand feet and found lift from the north end to the south end. I had to fly
off to the west to find any sinking air and get down far enough to land.
