After watching the weather, I decided to take off half a day and head out to Hollister for some soaring.
The BASA Pegasus 2BA was still rigged, so I wanted to give it another try to remove some "currency rust" for our upcoming wave camp in Minden.
The wind was pretty strong but steady. At first I thought it was the sea breeze (for which I declined to fly last week), but Drew convinced me that it was due to the approach of the frontal system.
Few miles west of the airport a significant lennie was showing.
After I re-assured myself that I could handle the wind, I inspected the ship.
By the time I got to the flight line, it looked like all was dissipating.
Lee Edling pointed out to me where the wave was before, so we headed that way,
Indeed the wave lift was still there (thanks for the tip Lee !!) and my first wave experience started !!
To be on the safe side I released at 4500 ft.
From there it went up all the way to the 25-101 intersection.
I reached 6000 ft over the lennie and started feeling out such a wave fenomenon (remember, it is my first time !)
It felt pretty steady and reliable. I noticed another higher lennie over the hills at Andersons reservoir, so I ventured out there.
I ended up a 8000 ft nearly over South County Airport. At this time I was realy in between different cloud layers and started feeling out some more new fenomena. It looked like there was CU higher up over the lennies.
I found that it was also possible to "surf" on top of the mixed lennies/Cu's with lift or minimal sink.
In view of my cross country preparation I checked my position (just in front of the SJC CTR), switched on the transponder and started "surfing" on top of the clouds south-east to Bickle.
The views were truly incredible. I have never seen anything like this before.
Clouds below, few clouds above, Monterey Bay to the west, San Jose to the north.
Of course I made lots of pictures.
After having heard all the stories about cloud cover closing in below, I kept my eyes open for this and indeed it appeared to be happening. I decided to decend through the narrowing hole above Frazier, as I did not dare to cross over the clouds to where I started. With the Hollister airport in view, I ran the ship at max speed to loose altitude. I had to turn around as I was still heading to hit the clouds.
After that I even had to apply the airbrakes to avoid the clouds.
It appeared that the cloudbase had sunk below 3000 ft and there was nearly complete overcast.
The lift was marginal (and I needed a
sanitary stop) so I decided the prepare for landing.After 2 hours and 10 minutes I touched down.
Two weeks ago I had a great (currency) flight with Stan Davies in the Grob (thanks again Stan), where we had "Truckee-like" lift up to 8000 ft too.
I never had thought that such an truly incredible flights would be possible in Hollister.
