We continue to suffer from strong south winds here, which make Pedro Bernardo unsafe to fly. On Tuesday a wave and rotor clouds formed over the mountain ridge and today (Thursday) it’s blowing pretty much the same so the day is cancelled.

However yesterday was a great “classic Piedrahita” race. The conditions were favorable for Pena Negra take-off. The task was 154 km over one waypoint with tail wind in general. The most tricky part spoiled the flight for many people was the first 30 km. There we had to go over the pass having two inversion layers in our valley and blue thermals. But as soon as it’s done and you’ve worked enough to get under the cloud base — then you’re awarded with that well known splendid convergence zone. Just jump from one cloud to another and do it properly in order not to fail in a huge sink zone. These local terrain conditions making Piedrahita the place for long record flights allowed us to have cloud ceiling as high as 4000 m yesterday, while it was predicted for thermals to end up at 2600-2800 m stuck in the inversion.

So far after 80 km we’ve got the trunpoint and now had to fly not higher then 3000 m because of the CTR zone. Such a strange feeling — to keep yourself 1 km lower then it’s possible. Nevertheless the rest of the route was so pleasant in late mild climb zones and thermals above those endless yellow fields, little villages and famous town Sigovia with its huge ancient aqueduct and the temple. Really unbelievable to see all this from above.

The goal was in Arcones, another flying place in vicinity of Madrid. Eventually 20 pilots made the goal including our Russian team. Whoa! Cool day for all of us 🙂

The results are here: http://piedrahita2013.com/2013/07/24/x_cuarta_manga_y_general_provisional.html#comments

The forecast tells us that the winds are gonna be stronger for the left days, so most likely we won’t have more tasks in this competition 🙁 Though, let’s see what happens.

Share on Facebook