Two days with light winds but storms and rain. Was not even worth trying to sneak in an evening or morning flight. Tomorrow looks a bit brighter, but no decent flying acording to the forecast untill Monday then from Tuesday on looking very nice indeed.

Today some animal stress. Bitel, our Pyrenean Mountain dog got caught in the electric cattle fence we have to keep the cows off the bee hives and the house. A bit of a shock for him, but calmed by a long walk and lots of snacks. Also on walking through the town I thought I saw a big interesting bug on the road. It was actually a blue tit chick which must had fallen from a nest in the nearby trees. He was just hatched as had its´ yolk sack still attached and very little plumage. He is now in our chick incubator nice and warm and demanding to be fed (insects and worms via tweezers) every 15 minutes or so. Stinky, our ginger tabby decided to even the World balance by bringing back a small starling and eating it the bathroom.

I see that Parahawking are now in Alicante and charging 120€ for tandem flights with Harris Hawks. I have high hopes for flying with blue tits. Paratiting. Though stinky and pals may have other ideas before my new commercial brainwave comes to fruition.

Nest lining kindly donated by Bitel

Finally the upper level instability has reduced in our area. An early start (around 11.30) at Lastra. Initially easy to climb out then slightly increased wind and less thermal. Normally Lastra beams me out within minutes of launch, but today there was a lot of searching to be done.
The photo below is of Pete and Linda soon after launch.

Pete/Pedro (our driver from last year) was the first to go over the back and it was perhaps 20 minutes before I was able to join him. By that time he was a bit anxious about the conditions and decided to go down and land. Big Peter and Lina followed within 10 minutes, Linda landing at Sta Maria. Peter carried on but landed at Sta Maria de Berrocal. The photo below is from roughly that area looking back towards the South and Piedrahita.

I made a decision to carry on flying even though everybody was on the ground. I wanted to have a look at some routes to the N. of Avila for posible goal tasks for the Worlds which remain out of airspace. There were two marked cloud streets running to the NE, the more northerly tending to form Cbs, and the more southerly one which I was flying under making it easy to keep a very high average speed. My intention was to check out the old goal and tp at Peñaranda (last used in the 1994 PWC) and some other goals to the NE. Below is the approach to Peñaranda.

At 2.45 after about 70km I decided to land so that we might get back for evening flying. The photo below is of the sky downwind. This was for sure a 200km + day.

This is the view to the north after landing which is the Cb street some 40km parallell to he good street I was running.

Another nice day going rapidly bad due to upper level instability. I had a pleasant 1hr and 15 mins in very gentle climbs around the town and on Cerro la Cruz. The weak thermals seemed not to the fit the sky at that time which went from Classic to full Cb by around 3pm.

Great smooth climbs but with a slowly building sky. After the Cbs we managed an evening flight too

In the photo below taken this morning you can clearly see the advance in the work on Take Off. the concrete drainage channels are now in place so I imagine this week we may see the grass go on.

A great looking day but conditions just a bit top end for our coastal flyers. Near 3000m base with a good 4/8 Cu sky. Some late afternoon thermalling at Chia then a fly down at Peña Negra.

Some nice soaring at Chia on Tuesday but the day ruined by impressive Cbs in the afternoon. No chance today so an epic 4 hours decent of Tormes in the rafts with good water levels.

The photo below is a line of cloud formed by the E wind and gust front colliding just E Piedrahita. Behind and above the well developed Cb

From the previous blog entry you will see that the take off has some light grey patches. This is various tons of a granite dust which is being laid down and compressed with rollers. On top of this the Astro turf will be laid, though not before some concrete drainage channels are dug. The area being prepared is 3000m2. The rollos of Astro turf are 12m wide and are glued together and will be buried at the front and back. Hopefully all will be ready for the 10th of June in time for the Spanish nationals.

This week our group is all Spanish. Something of a rarity. They are all from the Basque club Airean de Getxo and normally fly the costal site of Sopelana near Bilbao. Few of them have any thermalling or XC experience. Yesterday (Sunday) we made an evening flight at Chia which went very well. Today we were presented with some rather epic conditions for our coastal fliers. All went well, though I flew with Virginia for the second flight on the tandem when we took an easy XC to Barco. Nice evening conditions but no big restitution.

An early start around 11.15 with the usual perfect Cu filled sky all going wrong by 1pm. Great flying for the short period, though staying local and comming back to the Piedrahita landing.

A great looking day but just too much build up of congestus in the Avila Valley to go over the pass. Every body had an easy time in the house thermal over the Chalet. Simon and I crossed the valley to Malpartida and back, though I landed short of town at the old HG landing field. I had a meeting with the polititians in Avila late afternoon so the others got on with the evening flight without me. Trevor on the Alpha had a good day with some good thermalling during the early flight and finally ventured into the valley on the evening float about.