March 8 at Seminole

Today was progged to be a bit weaker than yesterday, with winds still brisk out of the east-southeast.  The last few days I have been just flying where the weather looked the best, and not worrying about a task.  Today I decided it was time to get into ‘Task’ mode, and a good day to practice flying in weaker conditions.  Based on my look at BMapper and XCSkies, I decided to set a  2.5hr TAT, first to the north with a 25-mile circle around 12 Flying Baron, then south past Semnole to 11 Flanders with a 10-mile circle, then north past Seminole again to 25 Osborne with a 5-mile circle, then home.

Things went well on the first leg for wingman John Mittell (BZ) and I.  We were finding OK but not spectacular climbs as we approached Flying Baron, and we were able to go almost to the back of the circle.  However, we got a bit low up there, and had to work some 2-3kt lift to get back up to a reasonable altitude.  However, we couldn’t get up to cloud base, so we had to start back south (upwind) at a lower altitude than I liked.

On the way back south, BZ was leading, and I was getting lower and lower, to the extent that I was aiming for Flying Barron and  worrying about whether or not I could make it even that far.  I managed to dig out from 1500 agl, but unfortunately John  was forced to land at Flying Barron.  I continued south with the idea of landing back at Seminole and retrieving BZ, but by the time I got near home, I got a radio message from Andreea that John’s crew (Wolf and Frauke Elber) had arrived at Seminole just in time to connect up BZ’s trailer and do the retrieve for me – yay!  Later we all met for dinner, to hear BZ regale us with tales of the extremely posh mansion at the airport (I think BZ is blogging this separately, so I don’t want to steal his thunder).

At the end of the day I was happy to have set and then accomplished the task, but not so happy that my speed was lower than I wanted and that I had managed to landout my wingman ;-).

Frank