It has started

Check out the flights of Dan (EA), Tim (BU), and Greg (JD) from Springfield on the last day of March.  Greg made it to 13000 feet in the Okemo wave.

Bravo Uniform

Congratulations to Tim on his acquisition of a new glider, a Glasflugel 304CZ! He and Dan picked it up in Oklahoma this week, and it was a long drive home for them.

 

Another kind of skiflying

Happy New Year!

Don't let this happen to you - XIV

The days are getting longer

Happy Solstice! Time to go for a bike ride.

That's a wrap

Congratulations to everyone on a successful season.  We made 597 flights, flew 22476 OLC kilometers, and added three new members and a glider. One of three derelict gliders came back to life, and we have high hopes for the other two for next season.

Thanks to Andy, Dan, David, Dennis, Don, Greg, Henry, Josh, Kari, Karl, Lane, Paul, Peter, Sonny, and Tim who made quick work of disassembling and storing the gliders and mothballing the towplane.

PM is headed for Kari's barn for some work, so it won't be flying at Springfield this winter.  There's always skiflying, though.

Left stick, right pedal

Congratulations to Kari Mettinen, who slipped a Private Pilot flight test into our 2017 season at the very end.

And congratulations to Evan on his first flight test recommendation as CFI.

Sugarbush Wave

I had a nice wave flight today.  Lift was rarely over 1.5 kts.  Clouds were few and far between but I did mange to get to 8,300'.  Wind was about 40 kts right from Sugarbush.  Thank you Rick for towing!

https://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?dsId=6161120

 Sugarbush and Camels Hump.  Adirondacks in the background.

Union Village Dam in the foreground and my neighborhood.

New glider on the field

Congratulations to Gregg on the first flight in his new 1-26!

By my count, this is the 19th glider based at Post Mills.

6Q is back in the air

Congratulations to Kevin for putting 6Q back in the air after an extended time in its box.

Wave camp report - October 7

Still more aviation happened today.  We woke to pretty nice conditions, blue skies, some cloud, a little wind.  Your forecaster was a bit surprised as it did not look like the sounding.  The wind on the ground was slightly favoring easterly takeoffs, wind aloft was south south west.  There were wave indications, just not in the usual places.
 
I  took off to the east and flew to the Carters, not expecting them to work, but we were seeing some vertical development that looked to have wave influence on the south facing spur of the northern most peak.  Indeed I found some rotor, and then wave, and was able to climb to around 8000 feet.  However, from the start of the climb, our lovely blue sky was filling in fast, and more worrisome was very low, very wet looking clouds at the south end of the valley.  As things were filling in, I descended to below the overcast that was now covering the airport.  Cloudbase there was around 5000 feet, but with plenty of lift - so if you wanted to stay up, you could.

There were about ten flights in total, with the high flight near 10,000 feet.  The day did end in a bit of rain at 3:00 but good flying was had. 

I am less optimistic for tomorrow and Monday, but later in the week could be very nice.

 RR