Foul Weather? Go to Blanchard

Great flight at Blanchard with just about every condition you could have. We started out waiting on launch for about an hour with a very light south breeze and 95% cloud cover. When the sun did peak through the thermal cycles would start pumpin' immediately. A couple of times it looked like the clouds were going to give way enough to allow for some decent heating but it would soon cloud back over...then rain a little. Finally the south wind kicked in enough to ridge soar and we all got off launch quickly. Once up we found light thermal lift mixed in, even though there was next to no sun getting through. We worked these to a couple thousand feet over launch and tried to fly away from the worse of the rain and occasional hail that was blowing through. Towards the end of the day the wind let up and the cloud cover finally broke up allowing nicely spaced CUs to develop.

I ended the flight with my first wheel landing (still nursing my injured ankle). It all went smoothly but if I do it again I'm going to keep my harness zipped up. I got soaked landing in the wet field and got a nice sampling of the terra firma in the harness boot.

Russ and I took these pictures of each other at about the same time. The two pictures give you a kind of panorama of the area.