Exsqueeze me if I babble semi-incoherently and interminably here – the adrenalin hasn’t fully worn off yet!
This past weekend was a great soaring day at Byron (small GA airport about 10 miles east of Mt. Diablo). (Not to be confused with Byron Bay glider club, New South Wales.) Cu, cloud streets, thermals galore!
To be sure, the scheduled instructor du jour called in sick and canceled everyone’s lessons both days. Oops. Turned out just fine, as it happened, for the most intrepid among us!
I showed up anyway (Saturday) to help launch the one private pilot who insisted on flying, as did our Field Manager du jour. He made it all the way to Oroville and back, about 7 hours, 520 km. His GPS trace and analysis on OLC, in anyone here is interested. After launching him, the FM, having nothing more to do that day, decided to go flying too. He took the 2-seat Grob G103, N103FB and invited me along for the ride. (No, that’s not us in the pic. The pic is from the club web site.)
We soared around the area for 2½ hours, reaching 4000’ agl several times and about 4800’ agl at one point after nearly giving up at a low of about 1500’ agl, with an ascent rate of about 470 feet/minute, it looks like from our GPS trace. We got fairly close to Mt. Diablo but couldn’t go all the way there because we started running into cloud base, and as far south as I-580 at the Altamont Pass. (Any local Dopers know these places.) The pilot let me try my hand at working some of the thermals, which I did kinda-sorta vaguely passably, I guess. We also took the time to play with doing some fairly aggressive stalls, both of us.
Sunday we had a substitute instructor. Our world-famous (literally!) private pilot launched again for another all-day non-stop flight to somewhere around Bakersfield and back, and I had an hour-long lesson with mostly thermaling practice. (The typical lesson flight is about 20 to 30 minutes.) I think we got up above 5000’ agl this flight too.
Well, I had a real blast this weekend, and got my daily adrenaline fix. I hope there will be a lot more days like these all summer!