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Posted by Ray
on 5/5/2009, 7:55 am, in reply to "02 May (Sat.)2009 Flight"
69.205.81.50
Nice flight Jim, nice report too! We need more cross-country flight reviews such as this, especially as it provides info on conditions away from the immediate vicinity of DSV and insight into the synoptic scenario. I wasn't able to fly as I was at the annual U of R Cardiology Conference all day...Murphy's law. And during every break I went outside to look at the gorgeous cumuli, and called DSV ASOS to check my visual estimate of cloud base. Conference was excellent, obviously ditto for flying, probably if one was careful a Gold and maybe Diamond goal flight day. Unfortunately I wasn't able to look at maps and soundings...those cumuli had healthy vertical development, very flat bottoms...suspect evaporative cooling may have contributed to some stability in the sub-cloud layer, breaking up the strong thermals. Another stabilizing mechanism is to have even a little warm air advection aloft (generally but not always associated with winds veering with height, conversely for cold advection)...a powerful thermal damper. It's even possible to have at the same time warm advection in the above-cloud layer, and cold advection in the sub-cloud layer...in which case because of entrainment between the two layers you have two competing mechanisms, and whichever one rules can make the difference between Gold and landing out. Any other comments from the peanut gallery?
Ray
--Previous Message--
: Got a late launch (for me), off a 1000 ft tow
: by Ted Timmons, yet managed a 5.0 hour
: flight in the ASW-20C.
: Went to just Southwest of Aurora (Near
: Buffalo)then to Canadaigua, then Hornell,
: then chased the 21 and Pegasus around the
: local area. Cloudbase was 8000 ft MSL, with
: Average lift in the 3 Knot range.
: It was a strange day.
: Trace showed average sink in the 4-8K range.
: Could not really find a better spot under
: cloud where lift was to be found.
: Could thermal, yet could not find any lift
: that was consist around the full circle at
: any altitude.
: Tried to get to the shear line from Lake
: Erie, yet it was not organized and petered
: out - did not band in any way. Tried to
: follow a shear line along the Lake Ontario
: boundary - nothing organized there either
: all the way to Canandaigua.
: Street was somewhat organized along the West
: side of the Lake back into Dansville.
: The ridgeline West into Hornell was working
: better than the East ridge on the way out.
: Lots of sink - unpredictable, choppy lift
: all day.
: Ridge worked OK late in the day.
: Jim Martin (UP)
:
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