Saturday turned out pretty much as predicted – a pleasant sunny day with 3-4kt thermals to over 4,200 ft. There were a number of burn offs happening up wind which started to make things quite hazy for a while and gave us a very orange moon rise afterwards. We didn’t find any wave. However the area east of the road was significantly better for thermals than the area west of the road suggesting some mild higher level activity. Thermals inexplicably deteriorated into bubbles at about 3:15pm. The higher level wave may have started to suppress the area.
It took a little while to get things going with the minimum of people present. A fair bit of time was wasted trying to inflate KRO’s main wheel, but the more it was pumped, the faster it wanted to deflate. In the end, GZQ was used exclusively for the day.
A big thanks goes to Mark Newton who flew up, drove the winch and then flew back home. With Mark’s departure, operations packed up and everyone went to visit Nitschke’s aircraft graveyard for the rest of the afternoon.
In the evening the Chircops, Justine Thompson and Anthony Smithremoved and replaced KRO’s tyre. Hopefully it worked on Sunday.