Crestline Soaring Society

Nice day. Light SSE after blowing N in the AM. Launched my Falcon 225 from Marshall at 13:31 and spent the next 40 minutes mostly below launch working narrow, weak thermals that drifted all over the place, but mostly were popping off the SE faces and heading NNE. At 14:00 I finally found a 400 FPM core that I could relax and circle in instead of chasing it all over the place that got me from 2700 MSL West of the 750 to 4100 West of Regionals. Got back over to Marshall at about 14:10 and hooked one that had to have touched 1k up once or twice, but was mostly 600 FPM. Slammed into the inversion at 5200-5300 a couple of times; the second time I drifted halfway back the spine from Marshall to the 18 and was about to turn back when my vario beeped. I circled and fought to stay in a tiny one that got me to 5500, so I pointed at Crestline at min sink, straight downwind.

The ridge lift was light but workable and there were thermals coming through. Got to 5800 at Billboard with two HGs and a rigid wing all bunched-up, then went for Pine. Sank a lot and worked the tip of the SE spine enough to dive for the main spine, and a rowdy thermal drifted right up it to the top. It tried to shake me off, but I persisted and was rewarded with getting to 6500. Decided it was time to go back to Marshall and land, and the trip straight into the wind from Pine to Marshall took a long time and cost me over 2500 feet of altitude. Got up a little at Regionals, up again east of Cloud, then went over to Marshall, where there was sink. I did a left turn into a big right-arcing approach and landed at 15:13.

There were a lot of pilots out flying, and I'll bet most of them had satisfying flights, especially those who launched after 14:00.

Someone had a Dragonfly on a trailer in the LZ before I went up; didn't get the story on that. Someone else was using the tractor to clear the north slope of the approach to the LZ and widening the new SE-facing training hill. Owen was riding the lawn mower with one of his daughters. What an industrious group.

Earlier this week I was hacking oleanders in my backyard with a chainsaw and found an old wind-streamer pole set in a bucket of concrete - that thing's from the original airpark. I'd grabbed it when the temporary LZ shut down before the AJ Airpark opened. I brought it to the LZ today and put it near the candy cane and new training hill, with a pair of blue streamers. I like having a wind indicator there when doing right-hand approaches and when I've put streamers on the candy cane in the past, they've quickly disappeared. Maybe these will last a while.

GPS track image