Tim was much smarter and circumnavigated the dead zone for a 216 km flight, stepping around the accursed sink, visiting Randolph, Sugarbush, Camel's Hump, Stowe, Cabot, and Lyme.
Men at some times are masters of their fates.
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A plague o' both your houses! (because I had to work today) Zounds, a motorglider to scratch a man to death! An airport bum, a rogue, a villain, that fights by the book of arithmetic!
-Evan
Sometimes it pays to be a wimp.
I had a great flight and judging from the chatter on the radio and the lack of postings on OLC I think a lot of other people didn’t. Not that 200 km is worth much bragging about but it was my second longest flight.
The wind was blowing hard (I think Rick said he saw 30 kts on his computer at one point) and I was able to follow a cloudstreet from the Elisabeth Mine in S. Stratford to Camel’s Hump. The lift was good at cloudbase (6500-7000’) but weaker and broken the lower you got. I would glide from one cloud to the next and arrive at 5,500-6000’. I, being a wimp, would settle for the 1 kt lift I would find there because as all wimps know 1kt lift still means your going up. After 5-10 minutes the lift would get better and then get really better so that at cloud base it was 3-4 kts. Sometimes I was thermalling at 80 kts to keep from getting sucked up into the cloud (I mean “to remain at the proper clearance from the cloud bottom as prescribed by FAR”).
Conventional wisdom would say that at 5,500’ you should pass up the 1 kt lift and look for something better. But I don’t think there was a lot “better”, especially once you got down to 4,000’ when conventional wisdom would say its “time not to be so picky”. It really paid off being a wimp.
From Camel’s Hump it was easy to cross over the highway to Stowe and from Stowe it was easy to follow a cloudstreet downwind to Spruce Mountain and Post Mills.
Tim
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