SM Thursday PIREP

Thursday was so close to turning into a viable contest day. Roman Michalowski [U] was able hit the cloud cycling just right to complete the Sports task. John Seymour [SM] gave it a go but didn’t want to risk landing out at Hornell (and probably earning the dreaded flamingo hat!) Here’s his pirep on the day…

Launched after the mission was cnx at about 1500. Noted strong SW winds at altitude with small broken thermals. Good looking Qs in the sun seemed to work ok. Large areas of left over OD limited options so one had to be high enough to glide out to a sunny area for survival. Well-formed cloud streets did not seem to work even when within a 1000ft of cloud base. The dark low whisps that usually signal strong lift did not and usually resulted in some sink and the occasional rain drops. Large areas of shaded ground guaranteed no lift at all.
 
Later in the flight the DSV ridge worked fine and was able to climb away in a thermal from ridgetop.  Conditions seemed to improve around 1700 with 2kt thermals to close to cloudbase. The cycling time seemed to be about 30 minutes or so. Conditions in one area were completely different given 20 or so minutes. Landed 1820 hrs.   
 
As in the usual UK conditions, go where the sun was 10 or 15 minutes ago.

Janine