That is how I found my best thermal ever. Flying my HP16T at a Region
8 contest in Eric's stomping grounds. It was about 2 hours into a 3
Hour post task and front started moving into the area. I decided that
getting home might score better than trying to make the minimum time
and landing out so I headed back to the airport under the cloud deck.
The Glide was totally smooth and I arrived back at the airport at
about 1500 AGL. (~3000MSL) on the far side of the airport the sun was
shining and I could see two large dust devils up on the hill from the
airport. As I approached closer dust devil I could see cheat grass,
tumble weeds and garbage bags floating around in it. I put my left
wing into the dust devil and turned hard left. My 10kt vario pegged. I
switched the scale to 20kts and it pegged again. It would occasionall
drop to as low as 16kts. I went from 3000MSL to 11000MSL in about 4
minutes averaging right at 20kts. I had to stop the climb due to cloud
bases. From there I did a final glide out to a turnpoint and back to
the airport to finish within a few minutes of the 3 hour minimum.
Looking out on the wing I could see cheat grass draped all along the
leading edge of the wing. I am sure it didn't due anything good to my
glide ratio. As I rolled to a stop at the airport all the Cheat grass
dropped off the wing onto the tarmac, which made for a great story
"There I was, so low that..."

Brian
HP16T



Eric Greenwell wrote in message ...
Casey Wilson wrote:

That said, I did once, inadvertantly fly into a dust-devil. I NEVER want
to do that again. If I had seen any dust indication that it was there I
would definitely have avoided it in the first place.

No dust, no dust devil! But, of course, the thermal can still be there.
Coming into one low can be dangerous, but up here in eastern Washington
State, we use them frequently, especially on blue days. They are usually
quite tame. Only the biggest are potentially dangerous, and then only
when "near" the ground (say, less then 1500 feet AGL).

What you are flying makes a difference, too: a 1-26 is going to be
tossed around a lot more than an ASW 20 with ballast. Flying faster than
the normal thermalling speed helps quite a bit if the thermal is rough.