Moved my glider to Truckee. There were some nice clouds, but no one was flying. The airport still had only 10 or so glider trailers. Met familiar faces from last year including Yuliy and Mike. Mike showed me what he worked on during winter. He made a prototype of watering machine. This machine can water both wings at the same time, automatically regulates the water flow, and shuts down by itself when the specified amount of water is loaded in the glider. I'm interested in what kind of watering systems other places use. Email me at gshibaya at gmail.com if you know of any smart ones.
Drove back to bay are with Yuliy and Mike. Had a dinner together at Chevy's Auburn.
Drove 3 hours (161 miles). This sports involves lots of driving...
Flew a 460km OR to Trinity Alps. This flight broke my personal record of longest distance from Williams (previous record was Hayfork). There were lots of clouds, so going up north was easy, but coming back had a challenge. Some clouds overdeveloped, and had rain and sink underneath. A couple of experienced pilots landed out after hitting by the sink. I managed to get around the rain, and made it back to Williams.
On tow at 12:15pm. There are already line of Cu's going north.
At 2:09pm. Keep pushing to the north. Clouds worked pretty well.
Turned Trinity Alps at 3:04pm.
Flying over Trinity Alps. You might worry where the hell I land out if I lose the lift. Actually, there is an airport within the glide range, near the lake seen in the last frame. Besides, with all these clouds, it is very likely that I can catch another lift easily. But you must have a solid confidence on your thermaling skills.
After flying through the rain. What's wrong with this picture besides nasty clouds?
Yaw string is gone with the rain! I had to fly the rest of flight (~200km) without the yaw string (or ball which gliders don't have in the first place).
Some people disassembled their ship and left Montague in the morning. But this place was too good to miss another flying day, so I decided to fly until 4pm despite a weaker forecast. The forecast was accurate again, and the flight was basically subset of yesterday's flight, so I won't go into detail. I took a few more photos and some videos of random stuff I saw at the airport.
This is the same place I had a nice cloudstreet yesterday. There were still good clouds, but they did't form a street.
A 360-degree view of Shasta Valley in the air. You can see Mt. Shasta, the town of Yereka, Paradise Craggy peak, and the town of Montague.
Siskiyou county airport seen from the air. This was the airport with the least security I have ever seen. There was no gate at all. Stray animals may just come in, and try to eat your airplane.
In fact, there was a stray cattle on the road. This little thing somehow managed to come outside the barrier, but was surprised by the outside world, and standing frozen for more than 30 min. Its friend cattle was watching worryingly and cluelessly from inside.
A US-made glider SparrowHawk. The wingspan is only 11m. The wings are so light that you can just hold the middle by yourself, and assemble it without using a one-man rigger.
The cockpit of SparrowHawk. Very simple. Like DG's, the canopy extends to the foot.
The front part of SparowHawk's cockpit.
An Italian glider Silent 2. This is also a small glider with 13m wingspan. This particular one had a self-launch engine in it.
Richard (the owner of Craggy Aero) showing me his product Craggy Aero Ultimate. The display was very bright, and readable under the sunlight. It's so bright that probably you want to dim it when you fly near sunset or under a deep cloud. The OS is Windows CE 5.0, and, it runs SeeYou or Winpilot. It seemed to be a good competitor to ClearNav.
You may have noticed that I have been trying Mt. Shasta from Williams in the past few weeks. But the weather condition was not too supportive, so I decided to drive up to Montague with my glider and fly there for the rest of this long weekend. Montague is a peaceful small town 30 miles northwest of Mt. Shasta, and it shouldn't be too difficult to get to Shasta from there if you have a good soaring condition.
This was my first visit to Montague. As I woke up in the morning at the airport, I already had a big smile in my face. The view of the fields and mountains was simply beautiful. There was much more green than Williams, Truckee, or Parowan.
I checked the weather, and it looked like there was a good chance to get to Shasta today. The forecast cloudbase was at 12,000 ft which a bit shy of the Shasta peak (14,179 ft), but we will see. I launched around 1:45pm, and released over Craggy Paradise peak. Craggy Paradise peak is a house thermal here, you can almost always expect some lift. Then, you'd move on to Badger mountain, and Gunsite to get even higher, and go to a real cross country flight from there. Since this was my first flight here, I decided to simply follow this well-worn path. At the time of launch, there were already nice Cu's around the valley.
The following photos are taken during the flight, and are in chronological order with my comments. Clicking on any photo will enlarge it.
Looking at Shasta at a distance (click to enlarge photo). This photo was taken at 2:31pm. There are no clouds (= no lift) on the direct path, so I have to go west, south, then east to get there. This sounds silly, but this is actually a fun part of this game. You can use only power of nature to fly to the destination. Once you put your head in this framework, every flight is an exciting new puzzle.
This photo was taken at 3:06pm. After flying west, I got this nice cloudstreet. Now, let's use this to go south. This was the easiest part of this flight.
This photo was taken at 3:36pm. This was the end of the cloud street in the previous photo. There was another cloud street that goes east towards Shasta. There was a blue gap inbetween, but my flight computer said that I could glide through it and would still have enough altitude to catch a lift. My guts feeling agreed, so pointed the nose to the next cloud street.
This photo was taken at 3:48pm while I was heading east under the cloud street. Every minute, Shasta was getting bigger and bigger.
This photo was taken at 4:06pm when I reached the end of the cloud street. I got pretty close, but there were no more clouds between Shasta and me. I could have said that this was enough, but I noticed that isolated clouds were quickly cycling (forming and disappearing) in the blue area. This meant that there were intermittent lift. If I use them at the right timing, I can get even closer. I decided to hang around and wait till the next cycle occurs.
At 4:32pm - okay, caught one thermal and got one-step closer. Note that you cannot see a cloud above me (actually, there was a very small one just forming). Because clouds were cycling so quickly, a big cloud would indicate that the lift is near the end of a cycle and not useful. It's best to go to a cloud right before it forms. But of course, you can't see it until it forms, so it's important to find a small infant cloud just born and growing. However, not all small clouds necessarily grow. They sometimes just disappear as small.
Alright, caught another one, and got another step closer.
I'm feeling lucky! Got another good lift, and came pretty close to the peak.
At 4:45pm - this is it! The last lift gave me the highest altitude of the day. The forecast turned out to be accurate, and 12,500 ft was the highest I got. From here to Montague was an easy glide back. I enjoyed a well-earned scenic flight back to Montague.
Here is a GPS trace of the flight (click to enlarge). The color of trace indicates the altitude (bluish = higher, yellowish = lower). The total flight time was 3 hours 47 minutes.
After flying, I had a wonderful dinner with new frieds, Richard Pfiffner, Patrick Mclaughlin, Curtis who also flies Sparrowhawk, and Ramy and his family at a Thai restaurant called Natalee in Yreka. Patrick is the owner of Mountain High Oxygen. I also met Morgan Sandercock who is a team member of Perlan project.
Flew around 300km at Williams. Double-towed with Rich (7HV) to Tree Farm. We had lots of clouds from convergence today, which was good. The cloudbase was 9,000 to 10,000 ft, and as typical for a convergence lift, I was sometimes lifted up way above the clouds. I once got close to the ground near Yolo peak, but other than that, the way to T15 wasn't troublesome. North of T15 was a blue gap up to Hayfork peak, so I decided to turn half way between T15 and Hayfork. On the way back was a bit challenging. Last climb was over Eagle Peak, then there was nothing until Alder Springs. There, I climbed to 11,000 ft which gave me an easy glide back to Williams, but some people couldn't make it to the lift, and outlanded on Diamond M ranch.
The condition was similar to yesterday, but was slightly better. We even had isolated Cu's over the tops of mountains. The lift was higher too. The best climb I had was over T15, 7-8 kts up to 13,900 ft.
This flight broke my personal record of longest distance out of Williams (previous record was a flight to Ruth). The flight was (again) reasonably challenging as always is on a blue day, but thanks to a late start, I was able to take the advantage of many pireps from those who were flying ahead of me.
Flew a 300km out-and-return flight to T15. There were no clouds, and it was hot. It was so hot that my PDA (for the lack of better words) froze in the air. I had to keep it in the shade for a while before rebooting it. Flight was challenging as always is on a blue day. Got up to 8,000 ft over Snow Mountain and headed Sheet Iron, but there wasn't much there, and was forced back to St. John. Larry (YE) was there, and we managed to dig ourselves out over a hot rock on the side of St. John. Headed north again, and after flying almost still air for 10 min, caught a good thermal 5 miles west of Alder Springs. The wind shear line was western than usual today. Once in the shear line, it became easier. I flew to Black Butte to Anthony to a peak south west of Yolo Peak to Yolo Peak to T15 without much troubles. The highest I got was 12,500 ft over T15. Coming back was an easy run following the shear line again.
Replaced rudder Mylar tape before flight. Moaning was dramatically reduced!
Replacing Mylar tape. It takes 1 hour for one side to remove the residue..
Flew about 4 hours at Williams. It took while to get first real thermal, but finally got one west of Snow Mountain. Caught another good one over St. John, then another one over Alder Springs, but from there to M3 was wide-spread sink. It felt like almost the wave down draft. Some of the lifts were wave-like too, that is, there weren't clear edges, and the lift was continuous in line. Turned Yolo peak at 4pm, and headed flew back almost straight to Williams. There was no cloud all day. Got a lot of bugs on the wings.
Drove 3 hours (161 miles). This sports involves lots of driving...
Nice cloudstreet extending northwest
Mike Mayo explaining his new watering machine
On tow at 12:15pm. There are already line of Cu's going north.
At 2:09pm. Keep pushing to the north. Clouds worked pretty well.
Turned Trinity Alps at 3:04pm.
After flying through the rain. What's wrong with this picture besides nasty clouds? 
Yaw string is gone with the rain! I had to fly the rest of flight (~200km) without the yaw string (or ball which gliders don't have in the first place).
Flew 460km in 5.5 hours.
This is the same place I had a nice cloudstreet yesterday. There were still good clouds, but they did't form a street.
Siskiyou county airport seen from the air. This was the airport with the least security I have ever seen. There was no gate at all. Stray animals may just come in, and try to eat your airplane.
In fact, there was a stray cattle on the road. This little thing somehow managed to come outside the barrier, but was surprised by the outside world, and standing frozen for more than 30 min. Its friend cattle was watching worryingly and cluelessly from inside.
A US-made glider SparrowHawk. The wingspan is only 11m. The wings are so light that you can just hold the middle by yourself, and assemble it without using a one-man rigger.
The cockpit of SparrowHawk. Very simple. Like DG's, the canopy extends to the foot.
The front part of SparowHawk's cockpit.
An Italian glider Silent 2. This is also a small glider with 13m wingspan. This particular one had a self-launch engine in it.
Richard (the owner of Craggy Aero) showing me his product Craggy Aero Ultimate. The display was very bright, and readable under the sunlight. It's so bright that probably you want to dim it when you fly near sunset or under a deep cloud. The OS is Windows CE 5.0, and, it runs SeeYou or Winpilot. It seemed to be a good competitor to ClearNav.
Looking at Shasta at a distance (click to enlarge photo). This photo was taken at 2:31pm. There are no clouds (= no lift) on the direct path, so I have to go west, south, then east to get there. This sounds silly, but this is actually a fun part of this game. You can use only power of nature to fly to the destination. Once you put your head in this framework, every flight is an exciting new puzzle.
This photo was taken at 3:06pm. After flying west, I got this nice cloudstreet. Now, let's use this to go south. This was the easiest part of this flight.
This photo was taken at 3:36pm. This was the end of the cloud street in the previous photo. There was another cloud street that goes east towards Shasta. There was a blue gap inbetween, but my flight computer said that I could glide through it and would still have enough altitude to catch a lift. My guts feeling agreed, so pointed the nose to the next cloud street.
This photo was taken at 3:48pm while I was heading east under the cloud street. Every minute, Shasta was getting bigger and bigger.
This photo was taken at 4:06pm when I reached the end of the cloud street. I got pretty close, but there were no more clouds between Shasta and me. I could have said that this was enough, but I noticed that isolated clouds were quickly cycling (forming and disappearing) in the blue area. This meant that there were intermittent lift. If I use them at the right timing, I can get even closer. I decided to hang around and wait till the next cycle occurs.
At 4:32pm - okay, caught one thermal and got one-step closer. Note that you cannot see a cloud above me (actually, there was a very small one just forming). Because clouds were cycling so quickly, a big cloud would indicate that the lift is near the end of a cycle and not useful. It's best to go to a cloud right before it forms. But of course, you can't see it until it forms, so it's important to find a small infant cloud just born and growing. However, not all small clouds necessarily grow. They sometimes just disappear as small.
Alright, caught another one, and got another step closer.
I'm feeling lucky! Got another good lift, and came pretty close to the peak.
At 4:45pm - this is it! The last lift gave me the highest altitude of the day. The forecast turned out to be accurate, and 12,500 ft was the highest I got. From here to Montague was an easy glide back. I enjoyed a well-earned scenic flight back to Montague. 
Here is a GPS trace of the flight (click to enlarge). The color of trace indicates the altitude (bluish = higher, yellowish = lower). The total flight time was 3 hours 47 minutes.
Heading to a small Cu over Eagle Peak
Flew around 350km
Replacing Mylar tape. It takes 1 hour for one side to remove the residue..
Yolo Peak covered with snow
Flew around 300km
Washing off bugs after a long flight
Flew around 200km