Skip to main content

Windy One

It looked good earlier on, lovely cloud street from the Waitakeres north over Moirs.

Unfortunately by the time I got to launch the street had gone and the wind had crept up.

Dave Austin (HG) made an appearance after I had muffed a couple of launches in what was top of my range conditions.

He had launched earlier and flew for about half an hour before it died and forced him to bottom land, during which he twisted his ankle. Still he climbed back up the hill to show me his swollen ankle, watch me try and get blown over the back, and fetch his car.

Luckily I managed to kill my wing before disappearing in to the valley behind, unfortunately it took a little while to untangle it from the bushes.

While contemplating my next step, Jeff Ripley turned up, he reckoned it was a goer, yeah right.

Here's the NZ Champ., I'm sure if he can fly I can :)

The wind is now steady at somewhere between 15 and 20 knots probably gusting higher.

He launches, has a collapse a few metres out, corrects, and pushes hard. He's still pushing until eventually climbing out and disappearing downwind toward Warkworth.

Not for me, packing up I head back up the track to the car.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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.
Post a Comment
Read more

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 ...
Read more

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.
Post a Comment
Read more