Gorham report October 11

Rick Roelke writes:

Hard to find the right words for today, as all the superlatives seem to fall short. It turned out to be one of the best, if not the best day of all the encampments I have been involved in. Our first launch was a 1-26 with Daniel Sazhin at the "wheel". Daniel had already completed his diamond distance and diamond goal in his 1-26, and today completed his diamond climb, and was just short of a single Lennie.

[Editor's note;  This is a tremendous achievement.  Daniel becomes the 39th pilot in history to complete all three Diamonds in a 1-26.  The first one was in 1965.]

The day had spectacular lennies, at times stacked 4 high over the primary. But they were evident nearly everywhere. I flew with MP up north for as far as we could (there was a lot of undercast to the north) but in the relative clear to the south, there were many clearly marked lennie routes to try. We had many diamond climbs, several single lennie climbs, but Evan Ludeman, took top honors at, wait for it, 31,000ft...

We had opened the airspace to 27000 feet, but later in the afternoon the conditions improved and we called for more space, and Boston responded quickly opening it to 35k. In the morning, good climbs were had -  6 to 8 knots down low, but still good, perhaps 4 knots at 18000 feet.  Later in the day, 12 to 13 knots could be found at the lower levels (8000 feet) and still 6+ knots at 18000 feet.

Winds and temperatures on the ground were reasonable to delightful. While there were some rough tows in the morning, and some bumps in the pattern, we experienced no real issues. Actually it was dead calm for the first few launches.

The clouds were just amazing. While it did stay clagged over up north, it seemed that the border between the overcast and the clear air was right along the White Mountains. I made a foray to the wave behind Moosilauke, stopping for lift at Lafayette, and Cannon along the way.