We had some relatives staying with us this week and I drove them to the airport for 3PM and then burned out to the field. It looked like the best day of the year and it figures that I couldn't get out sooner.
I arrived at 4:10 and by 4:30 I was being towed up...I was on a mission to get some rare thermalling in, something I haven't had much of this year. I joined Milko in a climb and took it just shy of base at about 1700m asl and then glided around two of the turnpoints I set for the Fun Comp before landing.
My biggest goal for the day (knowing I'd be late for the soaring) was to stay for a sunset flight. I made sure my wing-tip camera was all charged up for this flight and I'm glad I didn't miss taking some pictures on this flight. I must say it will be a flight I won't soon forget.
I took off at 7:40PM with hopes of taking some nice pics of me (how vain!) with the sunset in the background. I convinced Milko to join me on the voyage and we talked about how to line him up between me and the setting sun. It didn't really turn out for Milko as he got towed up too late. We flew tip to tip a lot and I did get some pictures, but we didn't have nearly enough sunlight for the pics to turn out. It was pretty cloudy on the horizon which spoiled our plans.
Steve towed me up in this big 4NM radius hole in the clouds for me to witness a sunrise (more of a reverse-sunset) over the cloud base and I was completely awe-struck. I had never done this before and had to keep looking at my camera to be sure it was functioning - I just didn't want to miss it. My camera is set to take a pic every 30 seconds, hands-free and it is so small, I don't have to counter-balance it.
As they say, a picture says a thousand words - so check out the 14 images I uploaded to the site.
Here is my favourite shot:
