Cari

After I had blown too many launches when visiting Cari the week before, I used the last three days for some groundhandling/ low wind speed launches. On the first of these days I went with Andy to Alp Scheidegg. He took some videos and tried to help me 'fix' my foreward launches, but I'm not posting any of those videos as I look really very silly ;-)

22./23.2. Driving again to Cari (as on Monday the Föhn was still blowing strongly on the North side of the Alps). Unfortunately much more clouds than forcasted and almost no wind on launch. So this was going to be a test if my launchung skills had improved...

On the almost flat area I managed a good forward launch in very little wind (albeit only on the second attempt). There have even been some weak thermals so I managed to extend my flight to a little more than 50 minutes :-)  

As tomorrow the conditions are supposed to be better (less clouds), I'm staying overnight in nearby Airolo.

...not the perfect conditions for launching ;-)

The day looked better, but it was very hazy (due to dust from the Sahara desert) and conditions on launch have been even more demanding than yesterday. Also the high pressure (1035hpa) wouldn't allow for really good thermal devellopement.

But with some help I had a good launch (- thanks to the two pilots from Thun!) and flew for close to 1.5hrs :-)

launch area

Pano looking South

Cari is a really nice flying site for late winter/ early spring with good xc-potential - as long as the chair lift is running. Although on my 3 visits here so far the conditions for launching never have been really good: always tricky in nil wind or even a little from behind.