Flight information - Omri Kalinsky (US) - 20.03.2021

Comment

Good, but rather strange day. Mostly blue, with increasingly strong W winds by midafternoon, over 20 knots up high. It felt like 2 very different airmasses today. The airmass by El Tiro was so so, with lift well below 10k and somewhat broken up thermals, especially later in the day. The airmass by Nogales was gangbusters, with my best climb up to 14k, some wave with visible lenticulars up high and some wispy visible rotors. The initial leg to Nogales just got better and better the further S I went. Shortly past Ruby Star you could see some patchy lenticulars at maybe 20k. I tried to stay on the W/upwind side of them thinking I might catch the up side of some rotor and flatten my glides and that strategy worked pretty well. Coming back from Nogales this rotor/wave assist worked really well SW of Mt Wrightson, but the price to pay for that was it took me a bit further E/downwind than I'd like. I hit by far my best climb of the day up to 14.2k and from there things just got weaker and weaker. I than glided about 35 miles down to about 9k when there really wasn't much worth circling in until I finally hit something that took me back up to 11k. From there I covered more distance going N hitting nothing that I could really work into a decent climb until before you know it I'm down to 6k just a bit N of Newman Peak. I was thinking about going to Coolidge but considering how much more unreliable the lift was N and how much lower I got, I wussed out and turned around. About 2 miles after turning around I stumbled into lift that took me back up to 8k and I decided to recharge towards Coolidge which was easily made, but I was concerned about making it back. On the way back from Coolidge I got down to about 5k before climbing back up to more comfortable, but by no means assured final glider of 6.5k for 40:1 back home. The rest of the way actually worked out pretty well hitting lots of dolphinable lift while I was still flying slow/conservative and the not terribly comfortable final glide turned into going 110 KIAS the last 10 miles home. I'm not sure if the way up to Coolidge was tough in that I caught the wrong time in the cycle or that I was hoping to find lift on the E side of Newman Peak (thinking about the wind and thermal drift) where I should have been on the W side (thinking about the angle of the sun relative to the terrain). Either way, I made it home with a big goofy smile on my face. Another damn good spring day out at El Tiro.

Pilot

- noComment -

Autocomment: Automatically determined proposal of OLC (20.03.2021 19:53:43 UTC till 20.03.2021 23:51:36 UTC) was changed manually.

OLC-Team