Friday - only 2 weeks left :-(
Originally I had planned just to have onsen in the afternoon and then cook risotto once more for dinner. But when I woke up at 0630, the sun was shining!!
For today Rick has not given me any advise (due to the 'lousy' fcst); so what now? Meanwhile (with Rick's help) I knew that the wx fcsts here are at least as unreliable as they are at home (probably much worse) and that if you ask anyone (including pilots/ instructors) they always (?) tend to give you the worst option; except Rick, which does his own 'reserach' and doesn't care what they all say. So I started going through the different websites recommended by him: mostly Windy, Windfinder, but in addition also Aeroweather. And to me it looked as today could be flyable at Kabuto-iwa: correct wind direction and not too windy, as the site is sheltered by Mt.Aso in these conditions. Furthermore the site is only 1.25hrs from Kumamoto, so in case of an error in judgement, we wouldn't have wasted too much time by driving there.
The normal procedure would have been to check in at the school/ club first, do the paperwork and so on. But as the direct road from LZ/ school had suffered major damage by the earthquake in 2016, it would have been a loooong detour; therefore we drove directly to launch. As I had flown here in 2019, they couldn't have told me not much new things anyway ;-)
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| Pano looking SE-S; Mt.Aso (activ volcanoe) on right side |
Conditions on launch turned out to be really nice :-) In the air the wind has been a bit stronger, but never bumpy. And as long as flying high enough, my Skytraxx4.0 was even showing me the wind at Kumamoto Airport (KMJ) 50kms away, so I would see any major changes.
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| Launch (end of track) E / SE |
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| over LZ, looking back to launch (highest point) |
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| official LZ |
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| 'my' LZ, as it looked to me that the official LZ might be turbulent under these wind conditions... |
After flying we paid a visit to the local flights school/ club and also paid the visitors fee. The recommended a nice Onsen and an excellent Soba shop for lunch afterwards.
...I wonder if tomorrow the wx will be really as lousy as everybody keeps telling me...
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