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Wake up, 220!
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The Duo has arrived! It was Ariane's and my turn to share some
flying together. No problem deciding which runway to use today - it was
blowing a north-westerly hooley, so at the very least the launch would be
interesting. As we lined up, the tuggie warned us about his previous tow,
which he described as "complicated". We tightened our straps a
further notch and rolled down the runway.
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First wave, Gache
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Believe it or not, there are a few good ideas coming from the French: the one
I particularly like is a refusal to include weak-links in their aerotow
ropes. When, at around 150ft, our tug made a violent descent followed by an
impressive upward surge, we were left with a large piece of slack in the
cable which could have ended in tears. We remained attached, to our great
relief. Immediately after our tow, launching was stopped to allow
the tuggie to ponder the meaning of life.
We watched with great interest how Wendy would get on in my
LS6c. Not that I doubted her experience, of course; let's say I was happy to
see that she and the tug were still holding hands as they arrived at the
Gache.
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10k
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The Gache was working well - we gained
1000ft in the first pass. Reaching cloudbase, we pushed onto the leading
edge of the cumulus and found a knot or two to get us above the cloud. A
further push into the valley gave us 3 or 4 knots which petered out at about
10,000ft.
The Chabre area was covered in non-descript cloud making
it difficult to see how to progress towards the pic de Bure, so we dropped
back to the Gache for a top-up, and then ran to the Lure where we found a
solid 5 knots right over our house at Noyers.
Pushing forward, we again failed to find more wave near
Chabre, so we did a little ridge-soaring for a change of scene. We managed
to find a 10-knot thermal that got us back to cloudbase in no time at all,
but all the while we had this feeling that the extremely turbulent
conditions would make it difficult to connect with the wave.
We decided that the pool was a better bet for today, so we
returned to the airfield for a spectacularly exuberant circuit and safe
landing.
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Liking your vario
Wave hunting at Chabre
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...and...relax
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