HIGHLIGHTS:
 

1. As you can see from the photos, it was a very convective day. Widely scattered rain showers didn't affect our soaring too much. Once in awhile we'd get a little rain over the field but most of the time, the rain missed us. The various cumulus clouds gave us moderate lift strength underneath and occasionally moderate lift between the clouds. It couldn't have been more picturesque for soaring above and around the magnificent cloud forms. Every so often the clouds would overdevelop but even with that, the lift didn't go away appreciably. The fiberglass sailplanes were up as long as they wanted to be, or their bladders could hold out. The students who flew were very satisfied with their performance and the amount of time they could stay aloft. And at the end of the day, the sun and clouds made for spectacular sunsets that changed each minute, making photography both satisfying and somewhat frustrating because every minute there would be another great shot to take and store. I've included here only a fraction of the sky scenes I took near the end of the day. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did taking them.

2. Morgan Hall and Mario Crosina flew their racing sailplanes, staying up quite long, well over two hours and likely could have remained aloft all day. The only difference was that cloud bases were low enough to keep them from getting higher but still could easily go from Avenal to Coalinga to 41/33 intersection and back again while losing only a small fraction of the altitude they gained.

3. Alex Caldwell found the 1-26 idle after my sniffer flight so he decided to go aloft and check it out for himself. Like the rest of us, he found good lift, stayed up awhile, and came back in time for Julie to fly the 1-26.

4. Julie Butler also flew and was aloft at the same time as Morgan. They flew together for some time and I was able to photograph them together from my ground location. Some of the shots of Julie appearing high above the grandeur of the cumulus formations were definitely keepers. Julie did very well making sure she had all the lift needed but remaining clear of areas where she might have been sucked up into the base of a cloud.

5. Daniel Solis also flew the 1-26 and had a similar flight to Julie's. But he got a bit too close to cloud base accidentally and found himself in more cloud than he anticipated. He reacted as he was trained to do, and was able to get to the side in the clear where he found even more lift that took him up to the highest altitude of the day, at 5400 msl. I'm sure he now has the greatest respect for the increasing strength of lift near cloud base and how easy it is to misjudge one's distance from murky clouds.

6. Thanks to Morgan having assembled and flown the ASW-20 earlier in the day, and urging me to take it aloft, I did fly in mid-afternoon "and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air" (J. G. Magee, "High Flight"). Most of the time I just sat there in the air-tight silence of the sailplane's cockpit in wonderment at the awesome scenes everywhere around me. If you've never experienced such beauty and breathtaking vistas then you must investigate flying in a glider on these types of days. I never got very high in altitude but I got more than high in mind and emotions.

7. Late in the day, Morgan installed another video camera to be pointed at the launch end of the gliderport where most of the activity takes place. However in doing so, and so late that it was quite dark, something occurred when hooking it up to the computer and the Internet that disabled one of the cameras. That should be fixed next time we are at Avenal. For the time being, the camera pointing northwest will have to do.