Flight information - Omri Kalinsky (US) - 05.12.2020

Comment

Fun winter thermalling day that was better than expected. Winds out of the NE at 10-15 knots. Most of the lift was below 10k with 1 very notable exception of a climb late in the day. I launched a bit past 13:00. First half an hour or so was pretty weak with climbs under a knot and lift only up to about 2k' AGL. It picked up a bit shortly before 14:00 and I started heading NW. I initially wanted to hit Sandia Airpark but it was clear I could have gone further, so decided to go further to Horizon RC instead. After that I got a bit overly ambitious thinking about Oritz Mine but was starting to get a little low for comfort and couldn't find any lift over South Mountain so turned around back S while I still had Sandia Airpark comfortably made as a landout option. I managed to work my way back up in fairly short order and was thinking about Biplane Ranch next.but decided on Chilili instead after getting a decent climb that drifted me in that direction anyway. After that I must have lined up on a nice thermal street as I was barely losing altitude heading NE out of Chilili. Then out of nowhere I hit a boomer that took me up to 12.5k at almost 5 knots, far stronger and higher than I'd seen the whole rest of the day. My next goal was to see if I could make Cline's Corner before heading on in. It didn't quite work out, as it turned out that one booming thermal was a dramatic end to the soaring conditions of the day as there wasn't much up or down for the rest of the day and that was my last climb. As I got closer to Cline's Corner it was clear I could make it, but making it back to Moriarty without another climb was very very iffy. I was hoping for a climb over the edge of the escarpment halfway between Wagonwheel and Cline's Corner but it didn't produce and I was down a 35:1 to make it back home so decided to turn around while there was still an altitude safety cushion and I made it back to the pattern with a few hundred feet to spare. I'm quite curious to understand what weather phenomenon caused that great last best climb of the day right before the entire sky shut down as opposed to the more common "fizzle" of gradually dying thermals becoming weak widespread wonderwinds late in the afternoon.

Pilot

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Autocomment: Automatically determined proposal of OLC (05.12.2020 20:21:09 UTC till 05.12.2020 22:49:59 UTC) was changed manually.

OLC-Team