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Jorgen
Captain
Gender: Male
Location: Lund, Sweden
Registered: Apr 2007
Status: Offline
Posts: 835
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 Posted Friday, June 19, 2020 @ 04:01 AM
Hello Fournieteers,
better late than never as they say, but now I'm back in the air with the 4 after a commendable decisiveness from Torbjörn Olsson at the Swedish Gliding federation. Soaring has been really good this year, look at the perky looking cumuluses at 7 pm the other day!
Last couple of weeks we've had a high pressure situated over northern Scandinavia which cause persistent easterly winds with dry, hot air with good conditions for thermals.
Most often when I bomb out I find myself ending up at my buddy Mikaels airstrip for coffee....
...and then I can do some ground support when he flies some of his WW 1 aircraft, like his Fokker DVII!
May the 4's be with you/ Jörgen
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Jorgen
Captain
Gender: Male
Location: Lund, Sweden
Registered: Apr 2007
Status: Offline
Posts: 835
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Posted Friday, June 19, 2020 @ 04:50 AM
I've had really good success finding the perfect timing for take offs using Stefan Löfgren's excellent weather website, his algorithm seems to work extremely well and posts the thermal conditions for Europe with different regions two days ahead:
http://rasp.skyltdirect.se/scandinavia/?conf=sesouth&wind=sw
This particular day the algorithm showed bluethermals and then late in the day some pretty high cloudformation. As you can see south of Sweden is really flat. I was enjoying some blue thermals, watching the weather. But there was something odd about the shape of the clouds...
Normally wave clouds are seen in mountaineous regions like in Provence, where the RF 4 was born. Something, maybe a windshear triggered wave clouds over the flat Scania region...
I actually encountered some wavelift, it was smooth and not very strong but just as is stated in the RF 4 manual "interesting flights can be made in mountain waves..."
May the 4's be with you/ Jörgen
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Jorgen
Captain
Gender: Male
Location: Lund, Sweden
Registered: Apr 2007
Status: Offline
Posts: 835
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Posted Tuesday, October 13, 2020 @ 04:58 AM
Hello Fournieteers,
you might wonder what happened to Mr and Mrs Crane this year? Did they also have their flights cancelled by Corona? Well, I think I have found conclusive evidence to prove otherwise.
I was on my way back with the Cub from Mikaels place (see throttle cable + rudderpedals threads) yesterday after some pleasant time in the shop. The weather was nice with zero wind and crisp, clear air which was really unstable so I had to fly around a CB that had formed on my track. That same instability was apparently used by most cranes in Sweden for their fall migration, I had seen huge packs cheeringly calling as they climbed up to clodbase at 3000 ft earlier in the day. This pack had flown around the CB and was headed for the south coast to cross the Baltic Sea. That's a 90 km/60 mile crossing that these magnificent birds apparently make without second thoughts, the day before yesterday when we were hanggliding on the south coast of Sweden we saw packs that made the crossing in a 20 kt headwind!
As always I feel privileged to be allowed to visit them in their "footless Halls of Air...."
May the 4's be with you/ Jörgen
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Jorgen
Captain
Gender: Male
Location: Lund, Sweden
Registered: Apr 2007
Status: Offline
Posts: 835
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Posted Tuesday, October 13, 2020 @ 05:20 AM
After landing (the CB had just cleared ESME airport) I saw more packs on their way south. Kinda hard to see them on the pic, you have to zoom into the "whitest" part of the cloud.
In this artistic pic you can zoom in on the radioantenna on the wing root which points at one of the crane packs. This was around 6 pm so I assume they would stay the night at the south coast- surely they are not qualified for nighttime IFR OPs, what?
May the 4s be with you/ Jörgen
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Bob Grimstead
Captain
Gender: Male
Location: Perth, Western Australia or West Sussex, England
Registered: Dec 2006
Status: Offline
Posts: 2029
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Posted Wednesday, October 14, 2020 @ 01:46 AM
Thank you Jorgen, it is good to know that it least some things in nature are continuing normally in this very strange year.
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Flying and displaying Fournier RF4Ds VH-HDO and G-AWGN, building replica RF6B G-RFGB and custodian of RF6B prototype F-BPXV
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Donald
Command Sergeant Major
Gender: Male
Location: Scotland
Registered: Jan 2007
Status: Offline
Posts: 489
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Posted Wednesday, October 14, 2020 @ 05:16 AM
Lovely atmospheric pictures of the Cub, Jorgen.
And for anyone who can't make out the cranes, here is a blow up to show where to look:
[Edit by Donald on Wednesday, October 14, 2020 @ 05:17 AM]
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