[Editor’s Note:  We published a previous post about the soaring club at Beverley, Australia here.]

I had been delayed at home during the morning, so I arrived at Beverley [Western Australia] just after 1pm, the launching was commencing for the task Dowerin – Pingelly.

 

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The cumulus were popping already and it looked like a good day. It took me a while to get Mike Yankee ready and there was a queue on Runway 16, so I didn’t launch until just after 3pm.  I had it in my mind to meet the fleet coming south from Dowerin and fly with them to Pingelly and return. Imagine my surprise when I got off tow under a well formed cumulus street when I couldn’t find a decent climb windward of the cus around Beverley, indeed it was a bit of a struggle to keep airborne. In the meantime, the streets took on the appearance of wavebars running NE to SW. I “parked” in a weak thermal for 20 minutes while I tried to figure what was going on. The first factor I noticed was that while XCSoar was telling me the wind was 200/11 knots, the cloud street shadows on the ground were indicating a brisk wind from the North West. Having seen this before, I realised that there was an upper shear wave system inhibiting the thermals.  I moved back along the wind line and was rewarded with a good climb under the north western edge of the next street, where the upper wave would strengthen the lift.

I then worked the thermal to the top, and it got quite broken as I approached the wind shear level, I had to push into the SW to get a core to take me to the top. I then sped up at the top and pushed forward of the cloud edge, pulling up in front and converting to figure of eight flight in weak lift ahead of the cloud, which gradually strengthened and smoothed out to the typical silky smooth of wave lift. Soon I was well above the cloud tops and could track straight and level at 10,000 feet along the long wave bar. After a nice long run, I decided to try and jump upwind to the next cloud bar and achieved that successfully, only losing a few hundred feet which was picked up by just cruising straight along the northern edge. The wind above the cloud was 330/20 knots!

This straight run took me out to 50kms NE from Beverley, looking down on Cunderdin, and the vista above the cloud was inspiring. I was sorry that I didn’t have my oxygen on board, limiting me to 10,000’ as it would have been interesting to see how high the wave actually went. It was getting cold by now so after a few successful jumps to downwind wave bars and almost two hours at 10,000’, I descended below the wave level, enjoyed one last weak thermal at 5,000’, pulled airbrake and landed at 18:50, a most enjoyable flight. See it on OLC at: http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?flightId=-1531733776

 

 

It just shows that sometimes gliding gives you the present of a different form of delight other than blasting around a big task! Hope you manage to get into it next time it happens…..

 

Smooth as silk, climbing straight ahead at 2 steady knots through 9,800’