Low level fun in weak lift!

I went out early yesterday morning for some practice and also a bit of fun flying.

Since the wind was light and there was not much lift around so early I was using the Osprey. After a few low launches to just practice landings I launched a bit higher, first try was launched to 116m.

At first I did not find any lift and slowly descended to 40m, there as I was getting ready to land, I found a bit of buoyant air, not enough to climb but it did allow me to maintain altitude for the next 3.5 minutes. Finally after 3.5 minutes the warm air broke away forming a small thermal that with careful flying allowed me to climb to about 95m, there I lost the thermal but managed to find it again after a decent to 70m riding it up to 90m again.

At this stage a friend arrived at the flying field so I decided to cut the flight short, total time around 10:30 and never higher than launch height!

I find flights like these really fun, it is hard work as you have to fly very carefully and work the weak lift as best you can but you learn a lot and it is extremely satisfying!

A really fun low level flight!

The Osprey is really great for this kind of flying, it can make use of the lightest lift and can be circled really tight and flat.

Taking a break between fun flights.

The next flight produced similar results, launch was to around 80m, very careful flying produced a very slow climb, peaking at about 118m and eventually making the 10 minute target after working another weak thermal towards the end of the flight.

Slow climb to 118m and then an even slower decent till the 10 minute target time.

The next launch was to 95m, over the next 10 minutes I worked 4 weak thermals twice peaking at around 160m before the 10 minute target was reached. Really fun and great practice for when you need to stretch a contest flight!

4 different weak thermals worked in 10 minutes.

I am really getting to know the Osprey now, unless the next contest is really windy I think it will be my #1 plane. The one thing I need to do is to try and get more flap movement, the current 60 degrees is not quite enough and it makes precision landings difficult.