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FlyBC "Site of the Day September 2020 Archive"
FlyBC is busy training 7 days a week
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@ 3000' in kilometers |
Rate °C/1000' Cloud Base in Meters |
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| 09-30-2020 |
 Woodside Forecast Woodside Forecast: Sunny. Hazy late this morning and this afternoon. High 27. Humidex 32. UV index 4 or moderate. 040° @ 5 kph 800 metres As forecasted there was light inflow winds and no lift, but nice bouyant air. 09-29-2020
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| Woodside Forecast Woodside Forecast: Sunny. High 26. Humidex 31. UV index 5 or moderate. 040° @ 15 kph 800 metres The road up is perfect as the loggers are working at 5 kms. They allowed us under their tower and cables as they were pulling logs up to a new log landing that looks like it will be a perfect launch platform when they are done. Launch proper is all overgrown as we have not been up there for 3 years. Work party needed. We had some tools but not enough to get the job done plus there was no wind? We contined up to the end of the road up Sasquatch Mtn. and found several possible new SE facing launch spots.  This is the view of the spots from Woodside Launch.  This is the view out towards Woodside from the most likely spot. It would be a road launch that would require decent cycles. We went back to Woodside as the winds switched to light inflow and we got the students a flight. Andrei did a birthday tandem flight for John around 3 pm.  Smooth sledders despite the outflow winds. 09-28-2020
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| Woodside Forecast Woodside Forecast: A mix of sun and cloud. Fog patches dissipating this morning. High 23. Humidex 27. UV index 6 or high. 040° @ 10 kph 800 metres Big day with weather ground school sessions and 2 great flights into Riverside and the smaller HG field for the students. It was not launchable after 4 pm here at Woodside but Dennie & Derek had a nice 30 minutes at Bridal.  09-27-2020
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| Woodside Forecast Woodside Forecast: Increasing cloudiness this morning. High 21. UV index 5 or moderate. 240° @ 10 kph 800 metres As we rounded the corner from Agassiz, we saw many paragliders above launch. Andrei & Derek did some tandems for Lisa's friend and they got 30-45 minutes of soaring in beautiful conditions. Jacek reported +4.4 m/s of lift at times.  A second flight happened with pilots getting over an hour of nice soaring til sunset.  09-24-20 to 09-26-2020
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| Woodside Forecast Woodside Forecast: Increasing cloudiness this morning. High 21. UV index 5 or moderate. 240° @ 10 kph 800 metres We had rain up there too, but there were breaks that allowed us to go hiking. We went up the chair lift as the CU were looking good, but the many windtalkers on the mountain were reporting +20 kph of SW or lee winds.  These sucker clouds showed that you could fly but there was a problem finding a launch spot facing SW plus we never took our wings on the lift.  There are many SE facing launch spots right near the chair lift top station but the wind was definitely over the back here. 09-21-2020 to 09-23-20
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|  Woodside Forecast Woodside Forecast: Heavy rainfall.. High 21. UV index 5 or moderate. 240° @ 10 kph 800 metres 09-20-2020
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| Woodside Forecast Woodside Forecast: A mix of sun & cloud. High 22. UV index 2 or low. 240° @ 20 kph 1200 metres Steve came out after a weekend in Savona where he logged seven flights. Steve got one flight around 1 pm, and it was pretty bouncy but his NOVA Prion 4 flew right through everything into a safe landing. Colleen came in 30 minutes after Steve and had a "wild rodeo ride" with switchy winds and thermals breaking off on the approach but she landed soft as a feather. Meanwhile back at Woodside lots of pilots got above launch for several hours.  I took a tandem at around 2:30 pm and Katherine mentioned she gets ill easily in a car so she took ginger pills before we flew. Unfortunately an hour into our great flight she commented that she was getting dizzy when we were at 1000 metres. The flight out to the Ranch would take about 25 more minutes in the thermic conditions so I elected to head east and she took over the controls and flew us to Cemetary Hill, which made her feel somewhat better, Derek was coming from Agassiz to Woodside so he radioed us to land by Hwy 7 for a quick pickup. We went back up with Steve around 4:30 pm, and he had a great flight climbing out above Woodside in a nice smooth thermal.  Steve decided he had had enough thermalling so he headed out to do a nice approach into Eagle Ranch. Coleen went for a second flight with Derek & Norm, and got high after some unintentional acro over the lower launch switchback and headed to the Gold Course to dodge airplanes. Derek was supposed to follow her there too, but got greedy and finally suink out after topping out at 1250 metres. I overheard Alex and Kevin talking about landing at Treasure Island in the middle of Harrison Bay, where Kevin was camping. An offer was made to rescue Alex with a canoe after landing.  Mission accomplished, no word on wet shoes or glider though? We had another set of tandems to do at 5:45 pm but as Derek and Norm flew out they noticed east winds on the windsock on top and in the forest at 400 metres so we cancelled going back up. 09-19-2020
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| Woodside Forecast Woodside Forecast: Cloudy. Showers beginning early this morning. Local smoke. High 18. UV index 2 or low. 240° @ 20 kph 800 metres 09-18-2020
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| Woodside Forecast Woodside Forecast: Cloudy. 60 percent chance of showers this afternoon with risk of a thunderstorm. Widespread smoke. High 20. UV index 2 or low. 240° @ 20 kph 800 metres The remaining Instructor/Tandem pilots stayed at Savona and cranked off a bunch of flights in calm conditions. A rainy day video to cheer up all our "hike & fly" pilots. On a NOVA Bantam 12 meter glider! 09-17-2020
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| Woodside Forecast Woodside Forecast: Mainly cloudy. Widespread smoke. High 16. UV index 5 or moderate. 240° @ 15 kph 800 metres Some smoke but again great conditions at Mid Launch at 930 am.  I was doing some wind sock maintenance in the Toilet Bowl when I saw the tandems landing to the east as the winds switched.  We headed to the Dump Ridge where it got up to 20 kph, good but not enough to soar and top land. New P-2 pilot Lorne came out and did 7 flights at Mid Launch and the Dump Ridge, hanging out with the Instructor Crew.  09-16-2020
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| Woodside Forecast Woodside Forecast: Mainly cloudy. Widespread smoke. High 16. UV index 5 or moderate. 240° @ 15 kph 800 metres Lots of great tandem flights for the Instructor/Tandem candidates starting at Mid Launch early on and then switching to the Dump Ridge.  I did some cleanup at the Dump Ridge landing area and installed a wind sock there. Apparently I did not clean up enough as one unfortunate tandem landing ended up in a cactus patch.  Pilots were doing the shuttling in the Can Am Defender so no hiking required and fast retrieves back to the top. We had some spectators today!  09-15-2020
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| Woodside Forecast Woodside Forecast: Mainly cloudy. Widespread smoke. High 16. UV index 5 or moderate. 240° @ 15 kph 800 metres I arrived on Mid Launch to see tandems setup in light west winds. Oddly it was blowing east at the Lake but great cycles for tandems. The tandems would fly down to the Crash Pad and then relaunch into the Toilet Bowl.  09-14-2020
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| Woodside Forecast Woodside Forecast: Mainly cloudy. Widespread smoke. High 16. UV index 5 or moderate. 240° @ 15 kph 800 metres Great conditions for the Instructor Tandem Course attendees as they did many tandem runs at the Mid-Launch and Dump Ridge. Pilots were camped out at the 4 km campsite.  09-13-2020
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| Woodside Forecast Woodside Forecast: Cloudy. Becoming a mix of sun and cloud near noon. Widespread smoke. High 19. UV index 5 or moderate. 240° @ 15 kph 800 metres We did Instructor Seminars til 10 am when Steve arrived for Day Two of his Intro Course. By 10:30 am we were on the road to Savona arriving there at 12:30 to clearer skies and light east winds and as we arrived we saw a paraglider descending off the Dump Ridge. We got everyone up the hill in the Defender UTV and Steve got his first high flights, with a total of 5 flights off the Dump Ridge before the wind switched to SW. The Tandem Candidates took turns being pilots and passengers and got as many flights here too. When the wind dropped off we moved to the 4K mid launch and Steve got 3 more flights down to the Crash Pad, and then relaunched into the Toilet Bowl.  Tandem pilots did the same rotation and we flew til 6 pm. 09-12-2020
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| Woodside Forecast Woodside Forecast: Sunny. Local smoke. High 31. UV index 7 or high. 040° @ 15 kph 800 metres  Six new Instructors here to learn how to train new pilots. We spent the morning doing Ground School Preparations and delivered it to a group of new students. It was far too smoky to even think about flying the students once they had completed their Ground School and Ground Handling sessions at 3 pm.  Some experienced pilots flew in the smoke but just got sleddies. After the students went home we did some maintenance in the Barn, changing out a simulator rope thanks to Dave S.  The Instructor Candidates left for a Bridal Speed-Flying session before sunset. 09-10-2020
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| Woodside Forecast Woodside Forecast: Sunny. Local smoke. High 31. UV index 7 or high. 040° @ 15 kph 800 metres Tony & Dennie were busy with four students today and everyone did really well. Five rounds as the winds finally blew inflow all day. The last round had students getting high and enjoying their first real turbulence caused by the inversion layer. I love how the new Nova EN-A wings just "boat through" the rough stuff with barely a tip tuck.  It started getting smoky around 3 pm, but by 6 pm we could not see Woodside from the Sasquatch Inn patio. Dense smoke.  We are starting our Instructor/Tandem Course September 12-19 so students will have lots of different options for support this week. 09-10-2020
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| Woodside Forecast Woodside Forecast: Sunny. Local smoke. High 31. UV index 7 or high. 040° @ 15 kph 800 metres Woodside is a very special mountain. The very shape of the NE part of Agassiz Mountain that connects to Woodside Mountain create a wedge that divides the NE wind much like the bow of a ship, and the resultant air on the lee side where launch and Eagle Ranch are located is calm and bouyant (until you get to around 1000 metres where you hit the NE flow aloft). We saw this effect happen today. Agassiz was reporting +20 kph of NE winds all day, yet by noon we had beautiful launch conditions and nice long bouyant flights for the students. We had Lorne, Aidan, Mike and a few visiting P-2's flying today and Tony managed the launch duties while I critiqued a few landings. Later flights had the students landing at the HG field and Riverside.  Sometimes the Riverside field can surprise a pilot! 09-09-2020
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| Woodside Forecast Woodside Forecast: Sunny. High 31. UV index 7 or high. 040° @ 15 kph 800 metres The outflow winds in Agassiz were blowing at up to 30 kph from the NE. But at the Ranch it was normal SE winds in the LZ so the students spent the morning kiting. Then as the winds dropped off Dennie and Tony took the students to Agassiz for some high wind kiting til 4 pm. As forecasted the NE winds dropped at 4 pm and they instructors took a load of pilots up to Woodside Launch. All flew including Derek & Martin N who got 25 minutes of light soaring . Only new student Jason didn't fly as he was beat from the days kiting. 09-08-2020
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| Woodside Forecast Woodside Forecast: Sunny. High 28. UV index 7 or high. 040° @ 15 kph 800 metres I had Lorne and Mattias along as Shaun slept in and mssed the bus. We arrived at the LZ to find east wind but light. We drove up the logging road to launch to find inflow cycles and birds soaring! The water on Hatzic Lake was also calm. Lets setup! After rearranging the carpets that had blown down last night, we setup the two gliders and Lorne was off first with a solid forward launch.  Next off was Mattias on our new demo SupAir Leaf 2 with a solid reverse launch.  Both pilots were able to soar and gain altitude before heading out to the LZ where they landed in no wind. I drove down and collected them and we headed back to Woodside to find Shaun and head up Woodside as the RASP said calm winds by 2 pm. Sure enough we found the webcam to show up-slpoe winds so we drove up. We had to wait sometimes for a cycle but everyone got away cleanly on round #1.  Note the clear skies on our first trip up. No lift but we elected for an Eagle Ranch landing this time. We went back up with Derek in tow and everyone had great cycles to launch into this time. Derek of course stayed up while the students flew out to the HG LZ for a change in venue. We raced back up for flight #4 for some and cycles were even stronger as the inflow winds really kicked in bringing smoke for the WA State wildfires into the Valley.  We were done by 6 pm and we had great, safe flights adding more flights to the student's log books. Kevin and Dennie did a bunch of tandems for us this weekend and they had great and excited passengers on all rounds! 09-05-2020 to 09-07-2020
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| Woodside Forecast Woodside Forecast: Mainly sunny. Fog patches dissipating in the morning. High 29. Humidex 31. UV index 7 or high. 040° @ 5 kph 800 metres The winds were not favourable for flying at Sun Peaks but a group was flying in Savona and had some fun. 09-04-2020
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| Woodside Forecast Woodside Forecast: Mainly sunny. Fog patches dissipating in the morning. High 29. Humidex 31. UV index 7 or high. 200° @ 15 kph 800 metres Then Tony took five stuents up to launch after briefing them on Riverside LZ. Three flights into Riverside by 5 pm with only one bush landing by the most experienced student who know says he will take more training as he is not ready to be signed off at 25 flights. I left to work on a leaky fuel strainer on the Cessna T337B and replaced it by 4 pm and I did a fly-by at 5 pm over Woodside (no lift and light winds) before strafing the Ranch from the north at 200 feet!  After a student debriefing we sent everyone home for the weekend so we can take some time off from training til September 8th.  We woke up on Saturday morning to low clouds and east winds. 09-03-2020
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| Woodside Forecast Woodside Forecast: Mainly sunny. Fog patches dissipating this morning. High 27. Humidex 31. UV index 7 or high. 200° @ 15 kph 800 metres I dropped Tony off at Launch at noon with a batch of students after a great kiting session at Eagle Ranch waiting for the wind on launch to build. I kept the shuttle going with the Can Am Defender taking 5 pilots up at a time while Tony kept "hucking" students.  I did 8 runs today and was getting dizzy by 6 pm from all the bumps and turns. Dave W completed his P-2 in time to head to Salt Spring for the long weekend to fly with friends. Congrats! Most of the students got four flights today in much milder conditions. Finished by 6 pm but it was flyable til dark as Colleen and I enjoyed the Bat Airshow over our swimming pool as they swooped in for insects and drinks of water. I captured them on video to be reviewed later. 09-02-2020
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| Woodside Forecast Woodside Forecast: Cloudy with 30 percent chance of showers this morning. Clearing this afternoon. Fog patches dissipating this morning. High 24. Humidex 29. UV index 7 or high. 200° @ 20 kph 800 metres  We had seven students so we kept them busy kiting in the Eagle Ranch LZ in perfect easterly winds perfecting those reverse launch techniques. Tony was wrangling the students today. At 2 pm everyone headed up in the big white truck as we had too many bodies for the Can Am Defender. One by one Tony launched the students and the first three had sled rides into bumpy landings at the Ranch. Some thermic conditions set up close to the ground so pitch control was necessary and they all did great! First three in were Lorne, Shirley and finally June. Then the last four students were all in the air at the same time. A convergence line setup from Launch to the Fraser River over the Harrison Highlands Construction site and they just kept climbing. Mattias got 45 minutes flying the new SupAir Leaf 2 Medium, Dave got over 60 minutes on his AirDesign Eazy SL, Mike was flying the Gradient Golden 4 and got 40 minutes and Sonny was thermalling around for an hour on the Ozone Mojo 6.  The last four pilots coming in had their hands full in the thermic LZ but no one lost a wingtip except Priscielle who is already signed off. Derek and Martin flew for about 90 minutes and flew out over the Harrison Mills peninusla and Martin reported 800 metres over the bridg before coming back in to Eagle Ranch to land by his car. By the time Martin and Derek landed the air in the LZ was silky smooth. Jonathon launched last and went to 1200 metres for over an hour before finally landing at sunset. Only one flight but the students learned a lot! 09-01-2020
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| Woodside Forecast Woodside Forecast: Mainly cloudy. Clearing this afternoon. High 22. UV index 7 or high. 200° @ 20 kph 800 metres We had 5 students; Sonny 17 flights, Dave 18 flights, Mattias - 0 flights, Lorne - 6 flights, Mike - 0 flights. Tony kept the newbies busy on the ground doing exercices while I took Sonny & Dave for four rounds. CanadaRASP and SpotWX both predicted strong inflow winds by 3 pm but it never happened so we flew til 6 pm, and everyone got at least one flight while others got four flights. Both RASP and SpotWX use the same models so expect similar errors in forecasting. Highlight of the Day: Dave flew to the new Harvest LZ at 5 pm. Bad news was he missed Game 5 as he retrieve took too long. Sonny got to test fly the new SupAir Leaf 2 which he loved until we weighed him and he was 1 kg under the weight range so we switched him onto the Gin Sprint XS for a few flights.  Despite the gloomy skies the more experienced students got to thermal on all flights. Colleen managed to break away from her academic chores to get an evening flight and there was an impromptu party in the LZ after 6 pm.  |
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1253 Kilby Road, Harrison Mills, BC V0M 1L0 Cell: 604-618-5467 E-Mail: FlyBC E-Mail |