Extra-memorable for me, this flight was one of the latest in the season, flatland thermal cross-country flights I'd ever done. It also followed a rather lackluster summer soaring season that was typified by hazy, weak lift and weather that made just staying aloft a challenge. So, it was a welcome change to have such a promising day forecast.

We got an early start on the day, and being a weekday, (Friday) I was the only plane staged at the end of the runway before the lift even started, with the Pawnee towplane and Dennis Linnikin our towpilot all ready to go.

Taking off as soon as the little wisps started to form in a clear blue sky, we were just a little early as it required 15 minutes of low level scratching just to stay aloft at release altitude. Finally, the lift "lit-off" and we climbed at 3 to 4 knots…. only to find the cu's bases climbing even more rapidly than we were. This gave a strange sense of losing altitude and sinking, not climbing…. even though we were! I had to keep checking the altimeter and vario averager to assure myself we were in lift and gaining altitude, despite the audio singing away with 3-4 knot notes. The cloudbase reached about 5k and we finally caught up to them and turned out across the start line.

On course to Taccoa were well-formed, highly predictable clouds that were continually getting higher and higher in an air mass with great visibility. The bases topped out around 6000 MSL and little circling was necessary to stay cruising straight ahead just under them.

After turning Toccoa, the path to our second turn point was semi-dictated by the presence of Lake Oconee to the East as well as a couple of leaf/brush fires throwing smoke, creating areas devoid of lift and clouds downwind of them. We wove our way to the second turn point and Thompson-McDuffie airport did its best to suck me down to it again for another outlanding, (as it had several months earlier on a previous attempt at this triangle). Not to be "had" again, J4 turned the sector and put the nose down to clear the sinking air. We got to an area of lift again at the low altitude point of the flight, about 2000 MSL, where the lift was now weak and the day getting late. Taking some time to thermal back up, it was obvious it would be necessary to stay up at cloudbase to have any hope of getting home. We ran between cloudstreets and slowed while turning upwind beneath them to stay in their (still strong) cloud-suck lift, now at 7000 MSL.

The rest of the flight home was a fun "sight-seeing" trip in an obviously "winter's-coming" kind of sky. Knowing it'd be our last flight of the season, J4 and I ended it with a high-speed pass and pull-up over the club hangar where a few members had congregated. All in all, a fun flight before putting J4 away to bed for the winter.

10,452ft. The bottom line, I got lucky. I finished the photo shoot and headed south searching for lift. I climbed to about 6000 ft. I then headed back up wind to Monroe. I had been blown quite a ways down wind. I encountered week lift. From the trace it looks like I tried thermalling in the lift a few times but kept getting blown out of it by the strong winds aloft. I then pointed the nose of the glider into the wind and slowed to about minimum sink and flew till I thought I had reached the other side of the lift. Then did a 180 and till I reached the other side of the lift then repeated the process. Initially the climb rate in the good part of the lift was about 3.5 knots. At 10,000 ft it had decreased to 0.2 knots with the Ipaq reading winds of 40 knots. I worked the last few hundred feet by circling until I was blown out of the lift then heading back up wind into the lift. I was an interesting day, looking down and seeing the gliders below and the haze layer trapped beneath an inversion layer. I apologies to Scott and the rest of the crew. In my excitement, when asked for bearing and distance to Monroe, I looked at the compass and radioed back 5 miles at 15 instead of 150. I also saw a glider below me and to the right and did not think of radioing and telling him the wave was 90 degrees to his left. I will do a better job next time. Flight log is attached. 73IC3VO1.IGC
Wayne Hoover - UNOFFICIAL record, just a great story.