2012 Mansfield Encampment…. first day

Arriving at in Mansfield on June 29th, the weather was less then promising. As usual the weather proved entertaining (to watch) but not suitable for grinding out any airtime. Thunderstorms passing through made for some impressive photography.

 

Perhaps we could have pulled up for a little airtime on the days prior to July 1st but waiting for better air seemed to be the right thing to do. On July 1st, and very much to my surprise, what appeared to be a washed out day that I fully expected to overdevelop and explode into thunderstorms…. did the the complete opposite! It all started with a very low cloud base of very unstable dark cumulous (I estimated base to be a mere 5000ft asl, only 3000ft about the local terrain). The only incentive was a much brighter, dryer, group of Q’s to the south.  The best I had hoped for was to get Randy (now the proud owner of Mia’s “old” ATOS VS)  a flight before he had to head home and perhaps get a chance for a little airtime before we would have to dive for shelter down south in the dryer air.

I towed first, immediately connecting with some soft light climbs that brought me up to a now rising cloud base. Lift seemed pretty reliable so I pressed south to try and stay in the blue (some rain had started to the north of the tow site at L+13). As I pushed a few Km’s south when Randy got towed up by Mia and was “hanging in there” so I continued to push south.  At this point in time it was pretty obvious the day was not going to go as expected. In fact it was rapidly drying and cloud base had lifted quickly to 7500asl.  Within a few hours the area had turned into a pretty respectable day with a typical cloud base reaching over 8000ft asl. 

Randy’s first flight of scratching around in the light air, ended a few miles south on L-Road with a good landing. Mia was right on scene and re-loaded Randy on the rig and at which point began a slow 3km back trek backup the tow road to get Randy a re-launch. This time Randy was up in the better air and worked on some nice local XC landing just west of Mansfield after a few more hours airtime.

(Down south the Day dries out…..)

I finished up the day with a 135km FAI Triangle, back at the tow site then a nice cruise back into Mansfield for a breakdown on the clean green grass at the shack. Ah, its good to be “home”!

July 1st’s flight