Saturday started out looking very hot and blue.  The cumulus clouds didn’t appear until well after midday.  Then one cloud to the west of us suddenly got very big and became a cumulo-nimbus.  There was lightning coming out of the blue and the whole valley was quickly overcome by shadow.  One pilot had correctly predicted the day: Dave Pickles had decided to go north.  He ended up doing 400km for the day. Sunday was completely overcast, so it was a good opportunity to do some work on the club fleet that we’d been putting off for a while.

Here’s the lightning from that storm later on Saturday night.  (Click to see it full-size in the photo gallery.)

In other news, the tug restoration is proceeding.  Here’s the partly-covered fuselage:

Well, what can I say?  Two fantastic days in a row!  The cloudbases weren’t particularly high but there were lots and lots of good thermals.  It was possible to do some very long flights. Mick and Morgan did 592km in the Duo Discus on Sunday.  Dave did nearly the same distance in his PIK.

Adam Eather joined the club and had his first glider flight on Saturday.

 Is this the invisible man or a skin cancer avoidee?

Saturday started off completely overcast and gloomy.  Nobody seemed to have enough motivation to get the gliders out.  All except Mick, that is.  Mick has come back from several months in China and was keen to get the Duo out.  Other than the low cloudbase, it was a fantastic day, finishing with some impressive thunderstorms.

Sunday started out with CUs growing early and threatening to overdevelop or turn into thunderstorms again.  There was lots of lift everywhere.  I flew 130km into wind without turning at all!  That’s more than an hour’s flying straight!  I achieved a glide angle of 86 to 1, including using the airbrakes to get down at the end.

Here’s a few photos of Sunday’s weather:

 

Saturday was a difficult day to pick.  There was a trough overhead that was supposed to be elsewhere, according to the synoptic chart.  However the descriptive forecast said that there would be thunderstorms north of Scone and West of Denman.  “How will the thunderstorms know to stay on the other side of that line?”  They knew, and they did stay there.  However the tops of the thunderstorms cast such a long shadow that most of the Hunter Valley was in shadow.  This was not good news for us, since we depend on the sun warming the ground to create thermals.

At the end of the day, the Duo outlanded at Rosemount winery and both Ben and I landed at Arrowfield (Jerry’s Plains.)  Here’s a photo of the retrieve crews enjoying their free beers at the pub:

Here’s a couple of photos of the Puchacz taken on Sunday when Dave was flying.  (Click for larger size.)