Gorham Report October 6 - 8

Here is Rick Roelke's weekend report from Gorham:

Saturday was a great intro to the area day, not much in the way of wave lift, but completely benign conditions for familiarity flights. Many newcomers took high tows to understand the "look" of the valley and the path back to the airport. You can't see the airport from the summit as it lies behind a hill, so it is great that we had conditions where it was easy to get back, and plenty of time to check it out. We got all pilots in the air, except for one, because we lost the afternoon to rain. But all in all, it was exactly the opening day I (secretly) hope for.

Sunday was the perfect intro to wave day. Well, perhaps not perfect as the best into wind direction is more southerly so the trip out of the valley is not as much into the wind as we had, but the lower winds were fairly light so the northerly component was not a problem. Winds on the summit were about 30kts from 320, winds at 14k were 50kts in the same direction…

We had a solid overcast at 8:00 but by 9:00 it was clearing, that left clouds marking the wave down low, and the Madison primary was still a little spooky with lots of cloud in the valley. I was the first off, as the official wind dummy (old hang gliding term) to see if we could get up in wave from the crescent range. I got off with a 2.5k tow and started working the wave rotor upwind of the airport. I suckered SW into doing the same thing, but we were unable to climb much above 4k. by the 3rd tow, the valley looked fine, and the rest of the tows were directly into the primary where most everyone contacted wave easily and were climbing at 3-5 kts down "low" and tapering to weak climbs as they got above 10k. The lift was centered behind Mt Madison, ahead of or over the "horn". After much time and several failed attempts, I was finally able to climb high enough to cross the valley from the carter range and climb in rotor to contact the wave. After getting above 10k, I investigated the wave down wind of the carters, the climb was better there, and further investigation revealed that downwind of Wildcat was the hot spot of the day. Doug Smith was the high man, with the patience to stick it out to just short of 18k.

I investigated further first looking toward Franconia but did not find much, so after another climb headed NE up to Maine. I went out with Vit, and we were able to find wave for quite a stretch but nothing we could very effectively climb in (just 2 kts max sustained). I continued up to 30 miles NE of Gorham, but turned back at about 10k to head home. There were no clouds marking lift on my course, so it was unknown if it could have climbed high enough to return from saddleback/sugarloaf and I did not want a long retrieve at the end of the day. I landed after about 7hrs of flying, at very comfortable altitudes (temperatures) and perfectly smooth air…

No diamonds, but some gold climbs, and for sure, a good time had by all…

We accomplished some good PR by taking a local selectman up in the birddog for some great photo ops of gliders against fantastic fall color. He will write an article for the Berlin paper.

Currently we have left Gorham as the forecast for today was flat calm (still would have been a pretty thermal day though) the Wx is not looking great this week, but perhaps that will change.

RR