<Saturday was my second solo flight. I was all set to go on runway 30 but then checking the AWOS the winds were from 250 and I made the call not to launch. Our great ground crew (thanks Jerry et al!) pushed 81C and me over to 23 and I was much happier launching off 23.
Yuichi towed me out near the reservoir and it was clear that there was some convective action because every now and then the tow plane would surge up or down almost a full tow plane wingspan.
I released at 4,000' a little south of Vaqueros Reservoir. I saw a line of clouds on the east of the Altamont Pass and figured that would be the best lift. But fighting a strong headwind I hit the 3,000' limit I'd set for myself without getting to the clouds and decided to turn back to the airport.
There was lift over the windmills west of the airport under clear skies but it was pretty bumpy and seemed unorganized. I tried to circle but most of my circles would be half lift and half sink. I was almost holding 2,900' but couldn't quite stay there. I would do a few upwind legs as I could see I was being blown east at a pretty good clip (you can see what my circles looked like on OLC http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?dsId=2195421).
I tried going upwind to see if there was anything different and hit an area of 6-8 knots down. Hmmm, does that mean it's going up somewhere? I didn't have a lot of altitude to try penetrating upwind so after some more circling attempts headed back to the airport entering the 45 at a quite comfy 1,500' and bleeding off the extra altitude with airbrakes.
Next time I'd be tempted to tow a little farther/higher to be able to sample the area I thought would be the best lift with some margin to make it back.
Oh and before takeoff Dmitri sagely asked me if I really wanted to take an unsecured water bottle with me. I elected not to and was glad when I hit a bump that would have sent it flying (under the pedals or somewhere equally dumb no doubt). Would be nice to have a cargo pocket up front in FB.
Here's a rainbow from the ground. Turned into a great day!
- mang
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