Friday at Pine 3 hours 72 miles

[diablo]

After having chased around in the desert Thursday Fast Eddie and I headed for Pine for what was to be a day of preparing takeoff with flying secondary. Apparently the forecast called for north east the further east you went. After replacing the majority of the streamers and manicuring the launch and set up areas we started assembling my glider with cumis forming in the "chute" and branching out to the Ortegas. There were light up cycles with conditions light over the back. To make a long story short the northwest built in, which was pretty evident will all of the development over the Ortegas. After standing at takeoff for 45 minutes clipped into my glider we got the lightest of cycles and off we went thru the lee. I thought that I was on final. At the rocky bluffs I ran into a weak thermal drifting me to the southeast and the convergence. We had flown these conditions before and flying up wind it felt as if I was in some sort of rebound layer with the confidence that I probably wasn't going to flush and with 5300' turned downwind and at the Ortegas began to climb at 10k I was nearly over Dry Lake ridge. Flying back upwind I climbed to 12,200 over The Gorge and went on glide to The Splitter passing that low spot in the range I headed for Thorn Point and better development there. Not much happening there and was tempted to go on glide to Alamo Mountain but did not want to flush off to Mutau Flats. Doubled back to the west of thorn and the sun light and got light thermal which was drifting out of the southwest and towards Frazier Mountain. At 10k I headed for the southwest corner of Alamo and proceeded to turn north towards Frazier where the shearline was about a mile south of the mountain. Flying upwind to the convergence and nice development.( I wanted to leave from Frazier because it is the best lift source, has closer proximity to the Antelpoe Valley and on Friday was upwind of the Antelope Valley) at the convergence, in 1700 per minute up, I went to cloud base, 13,200, and then on glide to The Antelope Valley. There was development about mid way across The Valley and I was on glide for the first cloud unfortunately the over development from the north drifted across the course line in addition the north west that was pushing me out to the desert was also pushing the development continuously a head of me. At Fox Field, in overcast skys, I was climbing slowly and drifting eastward unfortunately I was not able to climb out and landed about 10 miles east of Highway 14 in over developed skys. Had we not had the over development we had a great opportunity to connect, the wind was more out of the west than southwest and the effects of the marine air pouring thru the pass at Palmdale were mininal. At 1:15 we were a little late in taking off which hurt us out in the desert. All and all a great way to get the Pine Mountain season started. ***The north takeoff really needs some work!

[sbflyguy]

Nice flight Tony...remember that little Cessna 150 buzzing overhead at launch around 11. That was me coming back from Inyokern. If anybody wants to do some scouting from a plane let me know. It will only cost them around $30 an hour to help pay for gas.

Ben Haug

[Leeside]

Ben, if you learn how to thermal that little 150 that gas figure could come down a bit. Especially over Pine.

[Bo Criss]

Thermal we did. Ben took me up today. It was a bit bumpy behind the range, but we cored some nice lift over Pine in the Cessna 150 today. I'll try to post photos soon. Thanks for the flight Ben!