Crestline Soaring Society

Strong cycles on Marshall while setting up - both HGs moved by the wind. Launched at 15:02 and climbed several hundred over almost immediately. Got a solid one to 5600, drifting to east side of spine behind Marshall - didn't want to take the Falcon over the canyon, given the wind. Floated back to Crestline, where it was easily ridge soarable - got to 6k in 4 circles.

Marshall, 6 July 06 - Strong Summer DayHung out at Billboard for a few and headed for Pine at 6100. Right over the middle of the canyon gained 400 in a few circles and arrived over Pine at 5300. Hit a boomer right away, climbing to 7200 in 4 minutes, the first half of the climb was 800+ FPM on the averager. Only lost 700 feet going about 1.5 miles west, and climbed again to 6500 in a few circles. Headed for that low spine SE of Sugarpine and found I wasn't penetrating much at all - wind faster near the pass, I guess.
At 5800 I reluctantly turned for the front of Pine and lost 1100 feet in 3.5 minutes getting to the far (low) west end of Pine. Once there I easily climbed back to the top. Hung out right there for 5 minutes to relax, then took a 600 up core to 6800. Flew slowly out to the bluffs in front of Pine (over the white tank) and turned ESE to fly along the bluffs, still around 5k.
Found a fast-drifting core over the water pipes and took that all the way to the back ridge at 300 FPM. Interestingly, when I got above the highest road below Billboard (at 5600 MSL), the thermal drift clocked about 30 degrees and I ended up at 5900 in front of Crestline launch. Haven't taken a ride up the middle of the canyon in a while.

Got up again at Billboard, flew out to the reservoir, then arrived at Cloud Peak at ground level. Caught a mostly 400 up core from 3200 to 5700 over Marshall in 8 minutes, then circled around a bit and landed there at 16:51.

Good Flying,
Ken Howells

P.S. Mark Hoffman flew at the same time and sent me his .gdb file, so I ran it through GPSBabel and IGC2KML and made another Google Earth file showing both of our flights, attached below.

Images of GPS Flight Tracks:
http://www.kenvective.com/images/flights/