Serres 2016 week 2 day 1

Day 1

Most unusually when first arriving at a new gliding site your normally told that you should have been here yesterday (or last week)!

A promising looking sky

But today was a good first day to be here albeit a bit challenging. With a strong north to north westerly blowing, the home ridge was working superbly but clearly there were signs of wave all over the mountains. Chris H and Merv launched at 11 and quickly climbed to 5500 over the home ridge and were soon joined by Greame C and G who decided to move forward to make the transition into wave in the lee of the mountain at Aspres. Merv decided to hold back to see how this brave venture was going to turn out and decided to follow after G reported that they were climbing in weak wave. Not long after leaving the home ridge we were heading for the valley floor at a considerable rate of knots we kept going as long as we dared but no signs improvement forced us to return to the comfort of the home ridge and we were soon back at 5500. This was the pattern for the next 2 hours! It did not seem matter which direction Chris and Merv set off in, the result was almost identical. We were bouncing in the rough air between 5500 and 3500 sometimes feeling uncomfortably too far from the airfield. Eventually, we managed to ride the ridges far enough to the north west to escape the convective layer and finally made the transition into the smooth wave system. We climbed to 12000' before were had to return to start over! At some point during our low level exploits in the turbulent air the under carriage had become unlocked and was hanging down. This was pointed out by another glider cycling his wheel, neither of us had noticed, but we were a little preoccupied with staying airborne at the time.

YO enjoying the ride

Neil M on the second sortie made short work of the transition and finally connected with 10kts+ of lift that took us to the ceiling of FL195 in the lee of Pic de Bure. On the way back, to lose some excess altitude we decided to visit Aspres to discover why it is unlandable in a strong northerly flow. As we approached Aspres the Clearnav was telling us that we required L/D 7 or greater to get back to Serres. Just a few moments later we were descending achieving a L/D of 6 with -20kts showing on the vario so we decided not to linger!

Wave slot extending to NE