More Glider Flying

[Mike Ash]

Today turned out to be an unbelievably great day. I'll give you the
video and flight trace links first, so you can skip the boring
descriptive bits which follow.

Video:

Flight trace:
<http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?flightId=-2
010560556>

Last night I was trying to decide whether I should fly today or
tomorrow. Both were equally good as far as club ops and my availability,
so the only question was weather. The soaring forecast looked better
tomorrow, but I couldn't understand why. Under the principle that I
shouldn't trust any forecast I can't understand, I decided to go fly
today, even though the forecast was mediocre.

(Tomorrow's forecast *still* looks better than today, but I have no
regrets about going out today....)

The clouds began to pop as I was assembling around 11AM, which was
surprising: first of all, that's early in general, and secondly, it was
forecast to be a cloudless (read: no markers for thermals) day.

Took to the sky at about 12:30PM. Was on tow for about three minutes,
bang into a thermal at 1,700ft above the airport, and I was gone. In a
fairly short time I was above 5,000ft and heading south toward Luray,
the next airport down the valley, about 20 miles distant. Got there with
no problem and plenty of altitude. Most of the time I didn't even have
to turn to maintain altitude, and when I did, I could make it up fast.
Hit Luray, turned back towards home. A friend and I had discussed flying
to another local airport together and I wanted to be back by the time he
launched.

The trip back was just as easy and soon I was over the home airport once
again, at 6,000ft, an hour after my launch, with 40 miles already done.
My friend and I hooked up and we headed off to the north. First target
was Winchester, the next airport up the valley in the other direction,
about 16 miles away. Once again, an easy ride. Our ultimate target was
High View, a private, glider-friendly grass strip about ten miles past
that.

Past Winchester things got tough. Although the clouds looked good, the
thermals under them were weak and broken. I got to High view, but was
down to 4,000ft, and turned back toward Winchester when it became
apparent that nothing good was going to happen in that area. The whole
way back to Winchester continued to be a whole lot of nothing, and I was
getting ready to land there when I hit a thermal at 2,300ft (1,600ft
above the airport) about two miles south. It was tough work at first but
soon I was back to a comfortable altitude, with a safe final glide back
home, and back in business. This was the only point in the entire
flight, aside from my initial climb out, that I spent time below 4,000ft.

My goals completed, I pretty much just floated around and looked for the
best lift at this point. I made a half-hearted attempt to return to
Luray, but halfway there the clouds disappeared and I didn't feel like
chancing things, so I turned for home.

Lift around home was still good, and it didn't take much effort to stay
up. In this period, I saw my best altitude of the day, 7,300ft. Sometime
after 6PM, as I was contemplating finally coming down, I got The Call
from the ground crew, "You'd better be down in the next 10-15 minutes if
you want any help disassembling." And so I pushed it down and landed
with 5 hours 44 minutes on the clock.

Pretty outstanding, for a day that I thought was going to be so-so at
best. And the fall soaring season is just getting started!

[Morgans]

Post by Mike Ash
And so I pushed it down and landed
with 5 hours 44 minutes on the clock.
Pretty outstanding, for a day that I thought was going to be so-so at
best. And the fall soaring season is just getting started!

Sounds like a pretty outstanding flight. Unfortunately, I could not get
your link for the trace to work, even after trying to fix the line wrap.

You put the right brackets on it, but it still wrapped bad. I wonder why?

I would suggest that you try the following: Type in the link, then go to
the beginning of the link and put the beginning < in, then go to the end and
put the ending > in. If that does not work, or even before trying that,
have you considered increasing the number of characters in your reader's
line wrap settings? If that does not work, try googling tiny url, and use
it to make short links. It is pretty quick and easy, if you bookmark it for
quick access.

Also, I didn't check, but is your reader set for plain text sending on
newsgroups? That might help, if it is not.

I look forward to seeing the trace on this flight!

[Morgans]

Post by Morgans
I look forward to seeing the trace on this flight!

I tried to fix the link again, and it worked.

Here is my attempt at the link:

http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?flightId=-2010560556

or:

<http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?flightId=-2010560556>

[Mike Ash]

Post by Morgans

Post by Mike Ash
And so I pushed it down and landed
with 5 hours 44 minutes on the clock.
Pretty outstanding, for a day that I thought was going to be so-so at
best. And the fall soaring season is just getting started!

Sounds like a pretty outstanding flight. Unfortunately, I could not get
your link for the trace to work, even after trying to fix the line wrap.
You put the right brackets on it, but it still wrapped bad. I wonder why?
I would suggest that you try the following: Type in the link, then go to
the beginning of the link and put the beginning < in, then go to the end and
put the ending > in. If that does not work, or even before trying that,
have you considered increasing the number of characters in your reader's
line wrap settings? If that does not work, try googling tiny url, and use
it to make short links. It is pretty quick and easy, if you bookmark it for
quick access.
Also, I didn't check, but is your reader set for plain text sending on
newsgroups? That might help, if it is not.
I look forward to seeing the trace on this flight!

I don't know why it would have failed. I'm set to plain text sending,
and no funny business on my end that I know of. I don't want to set the
wrap length longer because that tends to annoy people. Here's the
shortened version, which is a very good suggestion:

http://bit.ly/46Firn

Hope that works better for you. I'll try to remember to post both
versions in the future.

[Morgans]

Post by Mike Ash
I don't know why it would have failed. I'm set to plain text sending,
and no funny business on my end that I know of. I don't want to set the
wrap length longer because that tends to annoy people. Here's the
http://bit.ly/46Firn
Hope that works better for you. I'll try to remember to post both
versions in the future.

I think it may have been how the brackets are added. As I said, type the
link, then add the first bracket, then the last. If you do not, it will not
always work correctly, in my experience.

At any rate, I did get to the link, and enjoyed it. Thanks, again.

[Mike Ash]

Post by Morgans

Post by Mike Ash
I don't know why it would have failed. I'm set to plain text sending,
and no funny business on my end that I know of. I don't want to set the
wrap length longer because that tends to annoy people. Here's the
http://bit.ly/46Firn
Hope that works better for you. I'll try to remember to post both
versions in the future.

I think it may have been how the brackets are added. As I said, type the
link, then add the first bracket, then the last. If you do not, it will not
always work correctly, in my experience.
At any rate, I did get to the link, and enjoyed it. Thanks, again.

I'm dubious about this explanation, because it's all just ASCII bytes in
the end. The short-URL version seems to be the best way around it in any
case, because then *no* stupid line-wrapping software at any part in the
chain can screw it up. :)