Monday, May 22nd 2023
A fantastic soaring day with plentiful and strong lift, here’s a few accounts from club members:
Mark:
Monday was great. I took off and was going to follow Jared down to Morgan county(yeah, sure). By the time I got up to altitude, he was already halfway there and I was only about 15 minutes behind him. But I headed that way, about 84 nautical miles. I was doing pretty well and by the time I got to just west of Newrak, he was making his turn for caeser’s creek. So I just decided to go around the CMH Charlie airspace. I was cruising between 6 and 7 thousand feet with great thermals. Coming around Bolton airport,, the sky west and north was pretty much blue. Made a climb at Bolton and then one west of OSU. The next cloud I saw was somewhere north of DLZ. I caught a blue thermal over the quarry near Dlz and climbed to about 8’000 feet. Then I could see clouds over Marion. So I headed for Galion with no problem. Thermals there were about 8,300. Lift all day was 4 to 6 knots average. For me it was a good easy, relaxing day with really no struggling.
Jared
Today had a very similar forecast compared to Sunday but today was much better. Not sure why, but that's how it works sometimes. The CU started forming around noon, and I was off tow at 1230. Before takeoff, I had declared a 503KM triangle task to Morgan County, Caesar Creek and back. It is fun to complete a declared flight because it's harder and in this case I was also going for the 500KM Ohio speed record which is 64mph. (Honestly, I didn't really think it was probably going to happen since I took off late and the weather was so bad yesterday. You never know though, so I often declare something if I think there is even a small chance I can do it).
The first half of the flight was really fast but then the clouds thinned out and people on the radio were talking about weak areas forming. Mark also told me on the radio that there were no clouds West of Columbus where I needed to go to get home! I thought I could be in danger of not making it home, but I pushed on anyways and hoped for the best. I also knew that the clouds could move into that area late in the day. It was pretty weak West of Columbus, but there were some small CU and it wasn't really a problem. I finished the task at around 526 PM at a speed of 66mph. This will be a state record for both 15m and 18m gliders! There were some really fast areas and some really soft areas that really slowed me down or I could have been much faster!
I didn't try to climb to cloud base a lot because the thermals got weak at the top, but I did get to 8200 ft by Springfield at one point. I had a few 5-6 knot climbs but 4 knots was normal and I had to take some weaker thermals in the bad areas. Average climb rate for the flight was 3.4 knots. I carried all 40gal of water ballast for the whole task.
After I landed, I went to dinner at the Mexican Restaurant and when I came back to put the glider away Kaz was just landing at 8pm! He had a 6 hour flight. Congrats to Kaz!
Also, congrats to Mark. He followed me to the SE and ended up going around the South side of Columbus and back up the West side. That can really test the nerves sometimes because if the weather is no good on the West side of Columbus you probably don't have time to go back around to the other way. Nicely Done Mark!
Kaz
I got up to 8k MSL, then flew toward Bucyrus. That was too easy, so I flew closer to Marion, then decided to go to Wyandot. The edge of the cu were over there and I didn’t want to test my skill any further, so I gained altitude at Wyandot and flew back to Marion once I was past my halfway point. Would’ve been 54 statute miles if I flew a 3-point task. Took off at 2p once I couldn’t see Jared and Mark. Tried to watch the sunset, but the lift died.
Here’s a few pics from Kaz’s flight:
