Had another great time at Thermal Camp at Air Sailing, NV last week. The weather didn’t cooperate the first 3 days: cold and wet. First time in many years (1930’s ?) that Reno received eight days of consecutive rainfall at the end of May. By Wed, weather was good, Thurs better, and Friday still good. My previous longest flight time solo was 55 minutes at Byron, which is not too bad for a rookie. On Wed at AS, I had two flights of over an hour in length; first up to 8800’, then 9300’ on second. Great fun. Thurs was better with a flight over 3.5 hrs and up to 11,900’ near Tule Peak. Lift everywhere… After almost 3 hours, I was getting tired and was down to about 7000’ and thinking of landing. Flying near the airport I flew into a 4 knot thermal and couldn’t just ignore it, that would be wasteful! So I circled and climbed back up to 11000’ again. Lift was stronger as I approached cloud base (maintain 1000’ clearance) and a few times the variometer was pegged and bouncing against 1000’ per min vertical climb rate. Whoopee…. Finally decided to pull spoilers around 9000’ and spiraled back down to airport….
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