WEATHER Nice spring-like conditions
Visibility: Hazy, some scraggly cus appeared along a weak convergence line, which stayed close to the field most of the afternoon.
Wind: Very light out of the Southeast and East.
Altitudes: 3000 AGL on tow, about 2800 MSL in soaring flight.
Time Aloft: 45 minutes
Max Lift: 2 kts. steady, occasional 3 kts.
Temperature: about 70 deg. F.
Comment: Nice spring-like day. A weak convergence line was almost stationary during the afternoon over, and just to the west of the field, marked by some cus. This enabled soaring flights by the 1-26 and the Orange Crush. In the Orange Crush, we did best by just flying straight along the clouds marking the convergence line, rather than stopping to circle. We made 2 round trip runs from North of the field down to the prison and back, and gained about 600ft in the process.
Tow pilots: Dan Gudgel, Harry Davies, Harold Gallagher
Donuts: Craig Gifford
Coffee brewed by: Alex Caldwell (didn't drink any).
Craig Gifford flies the 1-26
Craig made a great first take off, tow and landing in the 1-26. This video shows the landing. If you listen closely, you can hear what it sounds like when a wheel bearing has gone out! There's also something not quite right about my camera's exposure setting.
Enjoy it while it lasts! Photo by Harold and Dan.
If only it stayed like this all year long! Photo by Skip Breidbach.
Spring is almost here! We have some yellow flowers and some blue ones, species unkown.
Andy runs wing for Tyler Bishop. Photo by Skip Breidbach.
It was warm and sunny at Avenal. Very nice weather, compared to the fog in the Central Valley. Martin Caskey's good friend Dennis came over, and told us it was foggy at Paso Robles also, so he had to drive out instead of his usual mode of transport - flying his Piper tail-dragger, poor guy!
Craig Gifford flew with Alex in Orange Crush to knock the rust off after a winter lay-off following his win of the coveted "Iron Butt" award last year. Photo by Skip Breidbach.
Either Andy, Tyler or Craig taking off in the 1-26. Photo by Skip Breidbach.
Tyler Bishop moving the 1-26 back to take-off area after his landing. He was able to stay up for some time in the convergence, flying with the Orange Crush. Photo by Andy Reistetter.
Plenty of smashed bugs accumulated on the leading edges. A sure sign that spring is almost here, and there are already thermals!
Jaimie Strickland and Harold Gallagher on another training flight. Jaimie is off to a great start, and seems to be enjoying her flying.
Wheel bearing went out on left side on the 1-26. Will need to be repaired before it is flown again.
Other pilots at the field today included Andy Reistetter who flew the 1-26, Skip Breidbach, who flew with Harold, helped out, and took some nice pictures.
Dan and Graeme McIntosh started flying early, and had made a lot of tows before any of the rest of us even got out to the field. Graeme did 15 rope breaks, and met his time and flight requirements to enter the Canadian instructor course this summer. Dan then flew with Philip Gerfaud. Philip is working hard on his rating, and has flown several different types of gliders in Europe that we can only dream about here in the U.S. Well, I can say I have flown the Schweizer 2-22, the 2-33, 2-33A, 1-26A, 1-26B, 1-26C, 1-26D and 1-26E. But that doesn't sound as good as some of the European gliders I'd like to try out.
Thanks to Craig for the Donuts!
We made a total of 28 tows today. Thanks to the tow pilots and the mechanics who have kept our tow plane going!
Thanks to Harold for the $600 Coalinga fuel run, without which none of this fun would have happened!
RASP recap: From Bart's Avenal RASP forecast for the day from the previous evening.
The Hcrit represents the height that an average "Joe Glider Pilot" might be expected to achieve. It was pretty close to what we got in the convergence, about 2800ft. MSL. Avenal is No. 1 on the map for reference.
There was a convergence line during the day that was predicted here by the RASP. The line we actually got was just a little bit North of what is indicated here, by a mile or two, but the orientation of the line was accurate.
The surface winds are interesting here in relation to the convergence line. They are light out of the East on the East side of the Convergence and just a little stronger out of the West SW on the west side of the line. This is what we saw from our perspective at the field. So the winds appeared to be feeding into the convergence line that we flew.
The predicted thermal height indicated by the RASP skew-T Avenal sounding forecast was not too far off. However, there did appear to be somewhat more moisture in the atmosphere than what the RASP predicted, as the convergence line was marked by some scraggly cus most of the day. Later in the day, higher, thicker clouds started building up over the Black Mountain / Castle Peak area to the West, and we could see virga and actual rain over the mountains by about 5:00p.m. This did not seem to be predicted by the RASP. The Forecast discussion indicated a low was centered right near Fresno, and was starting to build strength right in our local area, so the RASP may have been somewhat off on the timing of that event.
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