Week 6 - Day 3

The forecast cold front passed through overnight and throughout the morning. At briefing, the satellite pictures showed a small window currently to the west of the mountains where there was a probability of extreme instability. Once again, a highly positive attitude (“It’s going to clear to leave 15k cloud base and 8kt climbs” etc.) paid off, and by midday said window of better weather was situated just to the south west. A hasty café con leche and bocadillo followed and we launched at 13:07. We had launched perhaps slightly late (must hurry Dad on his coffee next time…) but came straight off tow into 3-4kts up to 6,200ft amsl; the sink between climbs was huge – often as high as 8 or 9 knots but the thermals were nearly equally rewarding. Cloud base was significantly lower and the cumulus a lot scraggier to the North, so we set off to the south, having to take a rather large detour around some restricted airspace just south of the airfield which is used to protect Lammergeyers (Whatever they are?). As forecast, there was a large amount of vertical development in places, and the instability prediction couldn’t have been closer to the truth: After a few minutes of shower dodging to the North of the site and 10 minutes sat on a ridge at Stage 1, we took a climb up to 7,000ft. There was a large area of fairly spreadout cumulus stretching off to the southwest, but at a much higher base of over 8,000ft. Flying underneath this paid dividends, delivering a near constant 5kts to cloud base; the lift was so strong we ended up at 85kts with the air brakes half open and we were still going up. Wary of showers encroaching from the West and South -We had been explicitly told to look out for storms building near Cuculo (It’s a mountain just to the south of the airfield, please don’t ask me on the spelling) – we headed north west from Riglos. In amongst flurries of snow, it appeared that there were inklings of wave about, and we returned to site just before 4pm in one of the many showers. All in all, I don’t think we could have extracted any more from a day when we woke up to rain pounding the rooftops.