Conditions today look a little windy from the SE.  Our normal site for this is Chia, though we could cosier Tamames, which is quite far.   Cloud base looks around 3000m without the danger of the atoms we had yesterday.

 

Today is looking more promising for XC-  Not high clouds and a higher temperature.  Blue thermals to around 2700m.  The wind is very square onto the main ridge, so nice for soaring later in the day, but no easy back wind for the XC.  Barco or Avila, 50/50 on that decision.

This is the first of a series of illustrations I have done for a new series in XC magazine.  The Series is a comical look at various personalities in the world of flying.   Originally it was going to be a sort of static animation with him barrelling past in a wing suit.  The extreme 5 point perspective with a very tall image would have worked nicely .  That would be something like the sketch at the bottom.  Eventually I went with the PG as it fitted the story better and the smoke trails help to give depth to the scene.

 

I spent ages painting the windows and trying to get the scaling acceptable.  Later I learnt some techniques in Illustrator which would have made things a bit swifter.   I made a little intro animation to the series showing morphs between some of the characters.  I thought we were starting the series with the Soul Brother ( A super cool American HG dude), so the animation starts with him before he changes to the Acro Kid (in wing suit mode) before going on to a few of the other characters.  However, things got switched around a bit and the magazine went with the Acro Kid first.

 

Of course I would rather be in the southern hemisphere flying big XCs.  However, I am not, so I´ll keep playing with my crayons.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE5ixOl26ko&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

A light NW, so great for soaring , both thermal and dynamic at PN.  some cirrus comming in associated with the cold front approaching from the N.  An inversion around 2000m, just 100m above take off, so things won’t get interesting until later in the afternoon, so probably best to go up around 1.30pm.   I will be watching the windsock!

 

This should be an easily day with the wind coming onto PN.  Hopefully later in the afternoon will be strong enough for Alex, and by about 2pm 3pm should be find for soaring for Bill.  Cloud base around 2600m.  Once again weak climbs to later in the day.

 

The local forecast shows a reasonable day with no chance or storms and little chance of rain, though the mountain forecast seems to say we are likely to get storms.  Light winds so we should be able to fly PN.

Once again quite stable with the the atmosphere generally warm, so needing plenty of heating to get decent themals.  Unfortunately, if we get strong climbs, then we will probably end up with rain as well.