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Posted by Chuck Z
on 8/10/2008, 12:38 pm, in reply to "August 9 & 10, and Cumulus Castellani yesterday!"
64.12.117.202
The BLIP maps said that Saturday was going to be a good day with lift to 6,000 feet but on arrival at DSV the CUs looked like they were going to converge and overdevlop to a solid cloud cover. I listened to all the prognostications at the hangar and finally decided it might be OK but was prepared to get chased out of the sky by the dreaded ASOS message "lightning northwest" or "lightning distant". I stalled around after rigging to see how the students were doing. Doug Cline stayed up with his students, John Coburn and Dave Vander Linden in the ASK21. Our President, Doug Bradley was down on the ground after 30 minutes after launching in his Libelle. Not a good sign. Jim Rizzo is on the ground after 40 minutes. Steve Kronquest is up for 40 minutes in the 1-26 and Mark Wasserbaur is on nowhere in sight in the Pegasus. Good signs that it's time to launch. I was towed up, by Jim Rizzo at about 1:40PM and went through a number of strong thermals on tow. I still got off at 2000 ft. AGL and after a little searching found good lift up to 5,000 feet MSL. Ths CUs were nicely separated and fairly predictable. I took a nice little tour of the Finger Lakes passing south of Hemlock, Canadice, Honeyoye and over to Canadaigua. I worked my way back up wind to Letchworth Park and Silver Lake and then drifted back downwind and passed over Loon Lake and then took some pictures of the Cohocton Wind Farm. They are finally are getting the blades on the generators. About half of the towers now have the blades installed. None of the Wind Tubines are turning yet at Cohocton. The lift stayed good and I finally got to about 6,500 feet but could see some interesting weather forming to the North. A little rain shower could be seen passing to the north of Geneseo and there was a lot of black clouds further north. None of it was heading toward Dansville so I just flew up and down the valley for about an hour. Not much thermaling required because the lift was good enough to just cloud hop. After 3.5 hour of flying , I started to get cold. The temperature at 6000 feet was 11 deg. C or 52 deg. F. Even with everything closed up there is still 52 deg F air outside sucking the heat out of the cockpit. Time to come down. Still a much better flying day then expected. I love this sport!
--Previous Message--
: Saturday: Definitely the better day. May look
: iffy early AM but conditions should improve
: to solid VFR. Note: should, not will. Weak
: surface bubble ridge, hopefully good day for
: instruction, rides, and winch launches.
: Cumuli may pop up, but like last weekend
: they will be suckers, as the ground is so
: wet. Don't plan on getting very far from the
: field.
: Sunday: MVFR most if not all day, possibly
: some chances to sneak in some winch
: launches. Both POPs and QPFs roughly double
: those for Saturday.
: Details: The degree to which to TV
: forecasters will indulge in speculation just
: to please the viewing audience never ceases
: to amaze me. Many were, as far back as
: Monday, trying to predict which weekend day
: would be better. There is absolutely no
: scientific basis for this. If one takes the
: trouble to compare these
: "forecasts" with what actually
: happens 5 days later [called "model
: verification"], one finds such results
: are no better than looking at a
: climatological atlas for the respective
: location and meterological variables. Thus
: we observed flip-flopping all week: even
: yesterday there was still uncertainty, which
: is why I've delayed till today. As
: emphasized in last weeks discussion, if one
: looks at the GFS and NAM 500 mb vorticity
: loops, you could observe the models
: "changing their minds" during the
: course of the week as to the position of the
: vorticity maxima riding on the
: synoptic-scale low. This morning however the
: models have finally settled down, and both
: have significant maxima sitting over NYS on
: Sunday. Of course there's lots of other
: factors synopticians look at, but for
: beginners vort max timing is the easiest way
: to get a handle. One factor that can't be
: omitted this weekend, which is very
: different from last weekend, is the
: unusually cold air aloft. Which is why we
: had cumulus castellani yesterday [nice day
: for diamond altitude if you had the
: "right stuff"], and thunderstorms
: today.
:
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