Re: Convergence

From: Hesham
Activity_Date: 4/21/02
Remote Name: 66.51.204.241

Comments

Interesting flight yesterday from Chiefs running into convergence over upper Ojai.

It was blowing hard at launch. After many attempts, finally got in the air at 2:30. There was lots of lift. Got to 5800 over twin peaks then headed out over the valley. The drift at altitude was from the east which was something I am not used to. Rather than fight it, just went with it and as I got lower it was geting weaker. I was getting ready to land at Boccali's when I caught a weak but consistent thermal just before the LZ. I figured it would just buy a few more minutes and started turning. Before long, I was high enough to get to upper Ojai. So I headed there just for fun. I saw a big soccer field and radioed Bill to ask him if it was cool to land there.

Fully intending to land there, I started to find a lot of lift. Not knowing what to make of it initially, I started circling and gaining altitude. Before long I gained 1500 feet back to 3500 just NE of that soccer field. The lift seemed to run across the line separating lower and upper Ojai with the strongest band near the small hills NE of that soccer field.

The higher I got, the more turbulence I encountered. I was trying to evaluate my cross country options. There was light headwind from the east so Summit school didn't seem like a good option. I probably could have climbed much higher but the turbulence was increasing. I didn't want to experience topping out in the convergence so I bailed out and headed west back to lower Ojai. With the east wind and the altitude I had, I decided to try for the golf course.

Everything was going well for a while until I started to get lower. Then, as you might expect, I ran into a lot of west wind. My ground speed kept dropping until it was 10 mph. I decided there was no way I was going to make it to the golf course and turned around. I did a 1.3 mile sprint back to Boccali's with a ground speed reaching 32 mph. Turning final, I was almost parked about 100 feet over the east end of the LZ. Closer to the ground, there was less wind and a comfortable landing.

This was the latest I ever launched form Chiefs. I think there may be a lot of good flying to be had there in the late afternoon. Our group tends to always go there early and launch while the ground is still heating up. I wonder what Chiefs is like at glass off. Plus this late day convergence makes for a nice bonus. I don't know if it was present earlier in the day though as most pilots did not take that route.

Thanks to Eddie, Randall and Bill for all the help !

Finally a note about checking in once you have landed safely. Just a friendly reminder that we all need to check in and get acknowledgement that the transmission was received. This way everyone would be accounted for at the end of the day.