Epic Soaring

The soaring today couldn't have been better!  

Good soaring today.  It looked a lot like this picture.

I showed up at Harris Hill later in the afternoon, a crisp, clear, 80 degree day that makes the summers in  the Finger Lakes so very, very pleasant.  I had, ahem, domestic duties to attend to but I kept glancing at the building cumulus clouds and feeling the day slip away from me.

Finally, around 3pm I made it out there and they were looking for someone to give a passenger ride so  I strapped in and took Amy from Big Flats up for a ride.  The conditions were GREAT and we stayed up almost at will, enjoying the scenery below.  At least 5 other gliders were near us -some high, some lower, some at our altitude.

After landing, there were no other passengers to take up but the conditions were so good, I decided to go alone.  I took off and Roy McMaster, our tow pilot, towed me right into a huge thermal.  I should have let off right then but was a little slow.  Fortunately, Roy did a 180 and towed me right back into the thermal.  I cut loose and started my climb upward.

4,000, 5,000, 6,000 feet and the thermals were solid with 4-6 knots showing on the variometer.  I looked out and saw a cloud street headed toward me, so I circled and waited.  Pretty soon, I was near cloud base and sharing the thermal with a hang glider.  As I topped out, I decided to jump across the blue gap over to the cloud street.  I pushed 70 knots through the blue and pretty soon I was across and under the next street over.  

The lift was good, the street was long, and I followed it down South of Elmira over Southport.  I was losing almost no altitude during the transit and used the time to figure out where the best lift was.  I turned back and traversed the street back to the North.

I spent the rest of the flight jumping from one cloud to another and trying to work on how to use them to move from one part of the sky to another.  After some time, I centered up a NICE 6 knot thermal underneath a cloud and rode it up to cloud base.  I began to get some rain on the canopy and checked to be sure it wasn't turning into a thunderstorm.  Off in the distance, I'd been watching a buildup that was moving towards me and decided that although the conditions were good, they were dying just a bit and I should probably get down and get the glider put away.

I landed around 5:30 with about an hour and a half on the clock.  The soaring was fantastic, and the skill building was great practice for cross country flying.  All in all, one of those soaring days that you dream about in the middle of winter and hope for on a summer weekend.  Awesome.