Week 6 - Day 1

Was extremely tempting to fly yesterday afternoon, arriving at the airfield to a soarable and breaking 8/8. Took the 'responsible' decision not to fly with another 7 days ahead, and so the only possible option was taken: the bar.
Occluded front passed through over night, leaving some wispy Cu in the morning. Much more moist airmass 30km to the West, stratocu with wave above it, so our initial plan was to explore that if we could.
Launched just after Jose-Antonio (DCFI) at about 11:30, I'd tell you what cloudbase was but we never made it that far. Wind was 300/15-18 which was fine initially, and the tow and release onto Stage 1 (Foothills just North of the airfield at around 1200ft QFE) suggested alot of activity was being triggered, and we managed to string a few climbs together but soon lost Jose. We tried a lot of clouds closer to the airfield, with accompnaying vultures, but found that the bubble of lift was vertically quite small, meaning that the thermals were often short lived.

View to West at 09:00 - Wave above the Cumulus

A deceptively nice looking sky

We landed after an hour and a half and a fair amount of scratching, but by the time we had taken off for the second time, the wind was breaking up the climbs considerably. Large amounts of sink and a slightley bluing out sky quickly brought us back to Earth.
One of those days when you question whether your ability flying is reduced to that similar to a drunken butterfly or whether it was actually as tough as it felt. For our sanity, we've gone for the latter. 
Forecast for tommorow looks good, and apparently the order of the day today was using rotor thermals in the lee of the ridges. Interesting stuff.

Dan and Ed Smallbone (Flying 775)