First Flight at Moir's Hill

The weather looked good.
Post frontal instability, SSW winds averaging around 10 knots and its not raining.
Arrived at launch and there are 4 or 5 keen looking guys all kitted up about to launch. By the time I have laid out my glider they have launched, a couple after a few interesting attempts. Maybe its too strong, but I'm keen to try. I think its is within my capabilities.
After one fizzle and one "pickup and dump on your back" launch attempt, I'm away. Looking for the "guns" I spot them at cloud base rapidly disappearing North toward Mangawhai. Can't seem to find their escalator so I'm going to muck around the hill and practice thermalling.
I fly for almost an hour and a half, and reach 513 m (approx. 1700 ft) above launch almost at cloud base, a personal best. I can stay up longer but I'm starting to feel the cold.
Attempting to top land I find the lift too much and push out in front to circle down and land in the LZ paddock. Its my first flight for 10 months so I'm pretty pleased.
I later find out those "guns" flew around 30 km.

Comments

Inversion

Looked quite hazy with few clouds on the drive North, and sure enough these proved to be good tell-tales of an Inversion. At launch we appeared to be above the haze and the conditions were good for takeoff. Once in the air it proved difficult to get above 600m, and those that did found themselves back down with the rest after losing what they had. In the end I missed my opportunity to top land and ended my flight after an hour or so at the usual spot. First flight of the Season, forgot to set the GPS to log, and couldn't get Livetracking to work, a good shake-me-down flight.

Better at Walking Than Flying?

The sacrifices I make for the greater good. The forecast was pretty good regarding the usual parameters. But a couple of indicators weren't that great. First, the wind was expected to be more westerly than wanted and, a new one of interest, was that on the Skew-T Plot (the vertical X-section of the atmosphere) the gap between the Blue (dew-point Temperature) and Red (air Temperature) lines was unusually large and grew bigger as the day progressed. In simple terms, "no clouds". And this turned out to be the case. Andy was the only one at the turnoff, so he lept into the car and we proceeded to the end of the road. Out at launch conditions looked perfect, nice back-ground breeze with good, but not strong cycles coming up the hill from the SW. The wind already had a Westerly tilt. But in hind-sight the main indicator was already there. Very few clouds, and what there was were small and not well formed. As we prepared to launch a couple of nice clouds did form out ...

A New Year

Looks a possibility, maybe a little strong, but what the heck let's go have a look. Arriving at launch it is marginal, steady 22-25 km/hr min 15 max 30 ish. Sit and see if it changes. It does, strengthening slightly to 33 max, and swinging once again to the SE. Steve Dwyer and Les Graham turned up to show me how Hangies do it, and although Steve launched and soared for a while, Les didn't have a good day. The clouds finally gave up and so did I.

Mission From Moir's

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