Clear blue skies in the morning and a mild WNW wind.  Cu’s were popping in the sky by 10 o’clock but the wind was picking up.  Both KRO and MI climbed away from launch.  A little while later, Mark Tyler announced he was in wave and climbing above the Cu’s (which wasn’t a great surprise as all the Cu’s to the north were arranged in lines across the wind).  Kev Barnes launched in the Astir, but Ted Bowden left the field early with a sore back.  After topping out at 6,900 ft, Tyles landed MI and Anthony jumped in to have a go.

Thermals were a bit ratty and broken and all seemed to stop at 3,000 ft.  Anthony struggled to stay up without drifting too far downwind. He made several visits down to circuit joining height before climbing away again.  Finally finding a thermal going through 3,000 ft he pushed up wind from the top and found the smooth lift at about 3,500 ft and 3 km east of the airfield.  After a respectable climb to ~5,000 ft, the wave just stopped dead.  Spying a new line of wispy rotor cloud forming upwind, Anthony pushed forward and found the new wave at 4,000 ft and 3 km west of the airfield.  This worked really well up to 8,500 ft and then it became a scrounge to find the last bits of the wave, finally making 10,000 ft to the NW of the airfield.

By this time the wave was slowly stretching its way to the airfield.  By very late afternoon, the wave was 1 km west of the airfield – almost within reach off launch, with many people trying to work the rotor.  As the sun set the wave finally stretched to the road at the western edge of the airfield and the Blanik and KRO enjoyed a brief flight in the wave as the light faded from the sky.

Cara Bourne and Chris Stokes progressed really well with Derek as they were the only ones to share the Puchatek.