September 16th. 2007

RECENT NEWS

16.09.07

The weekend weather not too flash where I live but Saturday and Sunday interesting for different reasons.

Firstly:
Jim ’n Tim in JTA towed Steve in the PW5 in the direction of Hawera where he contacted lift under a cloudstreet resulting from the NW airflow rejoining south of the mountain. Some towering Cu indicated presence of wave. After Steve landed, Tim took a tow but conditions had eased off a bit, so no joy there. So Jim ‘n Steve towed Tim back to Stratford. The EW logger trace for some reason gave a flight track display that was quite jumpy as it showed the flight tracks of the glider.

Then there was Sunday: This is Peter Williams’ account…

Jim Finer and I went exploring yesterday between Normanby and Eltham in Bluebottle (JTA.. Ed) actually we were over about Highlands/Lowlands (two farms just south of Eltham. Ed) most of the time

Leaving Jim’s airstrip, we throttled back to 4000rpm at 1000ft agl. At these revs, the blue plane flies at zero sink. We contacted wave more or less straight away under quite straggly cloud. After awhile, Jim throttled further back to 3500 rpm in pretty good lift. We climbed to 7000ft, just flying in front of a rough-looking wave cloud.
The surrounding cloudbase was about 1500ft agl. We flew around there for a good three quarters of an hour. It would have been magic in a glider. A lot of the time, the vertical climb indicator showed about three knots lift. It went a high as seven knots.

The wind was from the NW, but it appeared to shift more northerly. There were some good lenticulars stacked up on Egmont.

By the way, Hawera had sunshine for most of Sunday. Not what you fellas had, I believe.





Peter Cook comments:

A real opportunity missed here for gliders. Clearish at Stratford later, massive NW waves last Sunday. Need to keep an eye out, as NW is good in South Taranaki.. It could mean trailering to Hawera for launching, if the effort is not too great.



Not last weekend but taken from South Taranaki and looking north during a westerly airflow last summer. Shows a lenticular, over wave boosted cumulus.

Peter Miller
18.09.07