Flying tomorrow - seems meh
F W
Luke
Rika, Alan and I will be hiking (and hopefully flying) Silver Star. We plan on beginning the hike up from west parking lot at around 2pm.
Luke Danielson
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Michael Cook
Luke
Yesterday Alan, Rika and I flew Silver Star. Thanks to Rika for posting interest and thanx to Michael for all the information and encouragement to keep this site active? I will do my best to make Michael proud with this report (but am under no pretense that this will be nearly as readable or informative as his reports). The morning forecasts did not look super great but I think we all looked forward to a beautiful hike and hopefully at least a sled ride. I did spend some time on Meteoblue and Windy but I am still learning to navigate/interpret the more complex aspects, and I didn't save screen shots so I'll do my best with details out and go with my general sense of the forecast. Looking at meteoblue and windy, the one thing that stood out was the difference in the forecast from NAM and GFS models (there were two other models that I was not familiar with). The forecasts were showing6-8 West and turning Northwest by mid afternoon with a couple models showing gusts in the low teens. NAM predicted top of lift below launch, while GFS seemed to predict over 5K for 4pm (it didn't seem like there were two inversions but maybe there was a small inversion lower. My understanding is that NAM is a better indicator for mountainous sites and micro climates. The NAM forecast predicted a temperature of that was about 10 degrees cooler than GFS and although I didn't have a thermometer. It felt more like the upper 60s that the NAM model predicted. MM5 (based on GFS model) seemed to predict top of lift 500 feet to 1k over launch (roughly 4100 feet ASL at the far south end of the ridge where we launched). There seemed to be a strong inversion above the top of lift which can be normal this time of year for a lot of our sites. There was minimal cloud cover forecast in the area after 2pm. Any corrections here are more than welcome!
The plan was to be at launch by 4pm. The magnificent wildflower display through most of the hike up to the ridge had me forgetting that I am out of shape. Walking south on the top of the ridge, we noticed the wind seemed to be coming from our backs more than up the ridge. At the south end of the ridge, before the trail goes through the forest, the ridge faces a little more directly to the west and the cycles were more promising. We quickly discussed potentially flying into the wind, glide ratio to LZ and potentially lots of sink if the wind was going along the ridge rather than up the ridge: My thought was that we would want to consider heading back north on the ridge looking for another spot to launch. In the past I had launched above a NW facing bowl to the north of the intersection with the Ed's trail (the ridge) and the trial we hiked up. As we were talking the wind was starting to feel real good (more like ridge lift than thermic). There were a fair amount of clouds over the mountain (the ridge was mostly cloudy), but clouds were fewer and farther between as you look to the west away from the Silver Star. We all set up and I realized my reserve handle had become loose somehow (make sure that is part of your preflight check). We all found spots that we felt were in adequate wind flow, with minimal sharp rocks, and spread our wings.
We launched in rapid succession and enjoyed soaring the ridge and working our way high enough to use the clouds for lift. The strategy I used was to soar in front of the ridge: Find a thermal, or spot with more significant lift, and circle (or figure 8 if low) till I was maybe halfway between the ground and clouds, stay under the clouds until gettting close to cloud base, head to the edge for added safety than follow the cloud back toward its heading. This seemed to work well for the first half of the flight. The sky did gradually open up and thermic part of the flight began as the ground got some more rays. At this point the thermals seemed pretty abundant (especially as I got away from the ridge). Top of lift went from around 4700 early in the flight to 5,100 toward the end of the flight. My highest altitude was about 5,070 and it came off of the thermal on a meadow knoll along the trail just above the "upper LZ" meadow. I am thinking this is a house thermal as I have observed lift there every time I have flown over it. Every time I thought about landing I wandered into a thermal and couldn't resist playing longer. My plan was to land at the quarry were Rika landed. Alan landed in the meadow surrounded by trees just above the west parking lot and mentioned "getting drilled" in. His original plan was to land in the west parking lot but someone had parked a vehicle right in the middle: Maybe the same person that I saw driving up the trail when I was flying over it. The quarry was definately sending off some heat which I half heartedly worked back up to 3400 feet. Eventually I decided to check out a clearcut that Alan and I had been eyeing before the hike up. It was on the north side of road 1100 about 1 mile north of the quarry at 1650ASL. Definately lots of stumps and brush piles but there was a road in the middle with lots of travel before going into trees (and it travelled roughly west to north and down the valley which works well for landing typical Silver Star conditions). It was lifty and a little bumpy coming in but I was happy to try an LZ beyond the traditional ones (I am sure others have landed there in the past as they have with a lot of the clearings in the area).
Overall I think lift became much easier to find when lower as the day wore on and the clouds gave way to solar heating. It felt pretty bumpy at spots and especially near the inversion at 4700-5100. Part of this was probably due to the low bump tolerance that I currently have. I flew for about 1 hour and 20-30 minutes and of my 5 days flying at Silver Star, this was probably my favorite day there. As always its a combination of the flying and the company that makes it a great day!
Luke Danielson
Peter Reagan
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Bill Briskey
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