Briefing at 10am.  We will try to get going to PN by 10.30am.  Wind at 9.15 is cross on the hill.  Take off before 11.45 is unlikely as conditions will be poor early on,

Not a bad day with good climbs later in the afternoon to c3000m but an inversion near take off height at 12 gradually going to about 2600m. SW/NW convergence along the top of the  main ridge but migrating south of  Avila later in the afternoon.  This will make it a little harder going to get to Segovia, but today if you maintain a route such as Ron´s the other day, there is a good chance of going beyond Avila.  If you take the mountain route, much less so as you need to be N of Avila to continue beyond.  Stronger NW winds this evening but which could give us an evening flight like on Tuesday.

Some pics of Sondrey by Gunnar of Tuesdays flight below also.

Today the forecast is a bit stronger than anticipated.  Perhaps around 30km/hr at 2400m.  Also throughout the day we are going to have a degree of cirrus which will slow things down, especially as there seems to be an inversion at around 2600m.  As the afternoon progresses the wind is due to veer more to the NW and to lighten, so we can expect an evening flight, somewhat better than the normal strong SW days.

If we look at the XC skies track and forecast we can expect a potentially big XC day as the climbs are good and well above 3000m later in the afternoon. There is also convergence (probably blue) to Avila , though beyond it moves back to the mountains which would complicate things after Avila due to the Airspace.  However, the wind is still favourable to continue to Segovia and beyond.

So, if you are brave, lucky and have a decent skill set for flying in moderately turbulent air and strong winds, you could potentially do a 200km flight.  I am neither brave nor lucky so will have a look at the conditions and hope that the forecast winds are are wrong and it is much lighter than predicted.  If not, then I will wait until it comes onto Peña Negra this evening.

What we shall do is brief at 9.45 and try to leave at 10am to have a look at Lastra del Cano the S. Take off.  Next few days are looking better/safer. ¨It is always flyable….but not necessarily survivable!¨

1pm

11am

2pm

8pm

A decent day for a flight to Avila, much more maybe difficult due to the N aspect in the wind.  The wind is on the hill lightly form sun up, this means that it may get stronger at launch earlier when the thermals kick in.  Thermal trigger point at 12 is around 22ºC with very little of an inversion so climbs may go easily early on to 3000m.  Convergence over the Gredos and mostly blue thermals for us out front.  Wind is likely to be too N for going beyond Avila.   Some N, NW convergence in the Avila  valley around Muñogalindo (I will explain in briefing).

As the wind is quite square on the hill we should get excellent evening conditions and restitution.   Lucky us!

Briefing at 10am, we will go up early just in cast the wind comes on strong earlier.

1pm

2pm

What Happened!.  A decent day with very good climbs to near 3000m early in the day.  Some of us went to Barco landing due to poss overdevelopment.  For the evening flight 8 of us did the run to Barco in great thermic conditions.

Weather forecast

Wind at 8.30am is very light on top of PN which is a good sign we can fly there with anabatic wind early on.  A good thing as we are likely to get some large Cu build up and possible showers mid afternoon.  Later in the day it seems there is more stability above which should reduce the depth of the Cu’s or congestus.

If all goes well we should get an early flight with some hope of a quick dash to Barco or flying around the valley.  Then late afternoon a decent evening flight.

Briefing c 10am.  9.45 if we see definite signs of the wind on the hill and developing Cu before. At 9 am the wind is a light SE, however it is better to try to wait to fly at PN if possible so I will leave that decision as late as possible (I am monitoring the windsock with my telescope).  If it is crossed/on, then we can take off from the slope below PN rock to the W of the main launch site.

You tracker numbers are up on the site.  You will have the same all week so remember that number.

If you have a smartphone, bookmark the LAND APP. //www.flypiedrahita.com/tracker/land

This will allow  you to see where everybody is and the van in relationship to your tracker.  It has very low data usage, just a few cents, if you don’t us the map option.

1pm

track to barco

11am

2pm

5pm

This should be an interesting soaring day.  We have light E winds, and W above the boundary layer.  Thermals should be fine, with some Cu development later in the afternoon.  Trigger temp around 20§C, so it does not need to get too hot for it to work well.  There is quite a lot of Cirrus which will slow things.  The wind is likely to come on at PN, but if there is any risk of it not coming on by 11am we will go direct to the SE site of Chia, from where we can quite quickly also get back to PN.

1pm

11am

5pm

The frontal system moves to the east as the day progresses and by 5pm we can see that the skew T shows storms or cloud formation to be unlikely.  Winds will be N, so OK for PN.  Lets hope so.  For the moment no plans for flying.  Puri wants to go to Salamanca if there is any interest in going there!.  I’ll be around c11am, but we will probably rebrief for 6pm.

6pm

1pm

late afternoon

Here are some low res JPGs of the last two Sky Junkies I illustrated along with the text by Ed Ewing.  These are the first two where I tried to actually do a caricature of the person that Ed had in mind.  All others so far were generalisation of ¨types¨ so had made up faces.  These two are caricatures of Chrigel Maurer and of Pascal Cambell Jones.

Don´t panic!  The overcast layer of stratocumulus is very normal after a cold front when the winds move to the N and we get an orographic build up of cloud on the mountain.  This normally starts to clear by 11am.  Hopefully by mid day we are flying.  The light winds and low base should restrict us to this valley and down to Barco.  The is more instability to the E so there maybe storms near Segovia, be here we should be fine.  Although the  base is low the thermals should be better with the unstable air.  This allows us to get thermals in valley easily and do a nice circuit flight.

1pm

Unusual day in that we had Gert at over 100km near Segovia and Chinny at near 90km on a track far to the North.  Bill, Anton and Peter also did notable flights in Chinny´s direction.  Tim went Gerts way but landed early in the Avila valley and had the longest wait.  These radical direction differences made the retrieve vehicle with Jorge make a 300km FAI triangle!.

Other excitement yesterday was Dirks landing in a tree/forest at lastra.  Remarkable he flew again that evening after a very difficult extraction by Stijn and a little by myself.

various tracks

Once again complicated by the SW only in the choice of take off.  Some convergence N of us which will probably be indicated by the largest Cu development.  No Cbs expected.  A fair amount of Cirrus daly on will slow things down.  At 9am the wind lightly over the back.  We will check again at 11am.  Briefing shortly after when I get confirmation looking through my telescope.

2pm

5pm

Rout wnad winds at 2400

Track conditions