Wednesday, June 18, 2014

The Franconia Dive

Here's an illustration of why Franconia is such a useful place.

Yesterday, Tim (AT) and Greg (JD) departed Post Mills a bit late, around 2pm. They soared up to Black Mountain and then made a beeline for South Kinsman mountain, which wasn't working. They followed the Kinsman ridge to Cannon Mountain, where they got back up.


This enabled them to get very high and stay in contact with the clouds for the rest of the flight, until final glide.

Plunging into the Franconia region is usually a good bet, especially with a westerly wind.  On the rare occasions when you can't stay in the air, there is a very nice gliderport at the bottom of the ridge.

The next time you see one of the FSA club members, be sure to tell him or her how much we appreciate their airfield, even when we don't land there.  You'll get a chance to do this in a couple of weeks.

The Franconia Dive

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I disagree to a certain extent. While the "front range" of the White Mtns offers excellent thermal + ridge possibilities, it all goes much better if you get there at ridge top height (or higher), so don't plunge. Don't dive. Just glide, baby, glide. And if it takes five minutes in a weak thermal on the way there to assure getting to the ridge at ridge top, just do it!

From ridge top you can often find a strong thermal to cloud base.

From 1000 below ridge top, I have often struggled for ages.

-T8