Saturday (A rainy day)
November 7, 1998 

Hi Gang,

What a surprisingly successful today for a showery weekend. 
-We had a brief seminar on ridge soaring in the Annapolis Valley.
-The diesel winch is back and working well.
-Terry Densmore and Rodney Miller both went solo.
-We managed several soaring flights.

Dick outlined the proper, safe techniques for flying ridge
 and described the situations and experience in ridge soaring
 in the Annapolis Valley; he provided a handout of which there
 were extra copies for those interested.

I was the first to use the diesel winch. We had a light north
 wind and the winching went smoothly. Dick and Tim did some
 winching also. We used the winch in drive and never had to
 use it at maximum rpm. It has plenty of power and handled the
 launches without faltering. The Ka8 was launched as high as
 1900 feet and the Ka7, 1700 feet. It was surely nice to be in
 a closed cab with heat to do the launching today. The only flaw
 was with the parachute that does not want to open on retrieve
 no matter how many times we unwind the shrouds.

Tim, George and I each had 1/2 hour soaring flights in RCE. The
 air was very unstable today and made for challenging but
 interesting soaring. George soared for 10 minutes with an
 immature eagle and flew more briefly with a couple of
 red-tail hawks. The sky was a mixture of low dark clouds,
 rain showers, snow showers (aloft) and clear areas. The lift
 was under the clouds. 

After a good 1800 feet launch I wandered over the field
 touching spots of 1 up lift but not until I got south under
 a long east-west cloud did I find organized lift that slowly
 took me to 2300 feet. At that time cloud base was still
 above me. Farther to the south was a line of showers and
 beyond that, sunshine. Looking to the north I could see
 another line of showers move over the Stanley. I stayed
 where I was for awhile enjoying the variety of cloud scapes
 but realizing that I would eventually have to go through the
 showers to land. I fully expected to find heavy sink in the
 showers and have to land quickly on 27. But, as I approached
 the showers, there was actually lift in one area (Isn't there
 a song called 'circling in the rain, just circling in the
 rain'?) and when I finished passing through snow and rain, I
 found that I had not lost much height. So.... I went on north
 to the beautiful clearing area north of the field - should be
 lift there - ha - the sink was actually heavier there. Finally
 I landed 02 in showers, and found that water droplets on the
 canopy made judging landing a bit more difficult. Anyway, it
 was a very enjoyable flight. 

I landed at 3pm. The sun gets very low quickly now and later
 in the afternoon, there was no more lift and no soaring flights.
 George checked out Terry and Rodney before sending off on their
 first solo flights. Congratuations Terry and Rodney! 

Cheers,
Larry