http://goldcoasthgpg.com.au

http://ozreport.com/ozweather.php

It's cloudy, the moisture hangs in the air, the cloud base is low, there are mid level clouds also. The winds are pretty strong at launch, but not too strong. It looks like there are plenty of mid level clouds and low hanging clouds out to the west. How could there be any lift at 8:30 AM (7:30 AM daylight savings time)? The ground is soaked.

The 10 AM Queensland RASP is showing less lift than is needed to keep a glider up in the air (the graphic is light and dark blue). How could we possibly stay up in this?  The 1 PM lift forecast is mottled, multi-colored, with spots of blue, greens and yellow all mixed up together east of the Great Dividing Range. All you can tell from it is that there will be a lot of clouds around blocking out the sun but perhaps sitting on top of good lift either that or raining on you.

But the winds forecast looks pretty accurate from what we see when we get on launch, so the RASP is good for that. Actually, it's good for the lift forecast too, but you've got to do a bit of "interpretation," which in the time honored fashion of the wise man school of meteorology, is take a forecast compare it with what happens on that day, figure that on a future day given a similar forecast it will forecast a similar day as happened in the past, but not necessarily what the forecast forecasted. Got that?

Any way, the RASP models should be handled a bit differently here than they should be at Forbes or Mt. Beauty, where they were stunningly accurate (especially relative to the wise men at Mt. Beauty who were actually asked to do the forecasting).

So still the mystery, what is up with this place? It's just off the coast, but its cracking at 7 AM (not on the days that I've been here, but on some days). It's got good lift at 8:30 AM on days where clouds cover 80 percent or more of the sky, with mid level clouds that should be blocking the heating.

The Beechmont launch faces south east and we are here, of course, on days where the wind is out of the southeast. So that helps for sure. But there are cu's forming in front of launch and you get up in the cu's and you can get to cloud base in six minutes (1,400' over the 1,800' launch) and you are on your way over the back playing with the wispies (the cu's are only a few feet thick).

On Monday Raef, Belinda and I got to launch at 8 o'clock and soon Jonny and Martin joined us. Martin lives up at Beechmont also, like Jonny. I was already setting up when Jonny arrived as I didn't want him to get ahead of me this time.

I was off first and just kept climbing the whole time to cloud base. There were thin cu's going down wind for a few kilometers so I decided just to hang at cloud base and go down wind under them. I now knew where Hinch Cliff was and with this good glide it was easy to get there with 2,300' instead of 1,300' like the day before.

Jonny, who launch about three minutes after me, saw me go, came after me, but was lower and had to stop at the low ridge before Hinch Cliff to get up. At Hinch Cliff it was but a few minutes and I was up to 3,200' and drifting over the back toward Beaudesert. The wind was about 14 mph out of the southeast.

There were cu's south of Beaudesert and I hung out at 2,200' (MSL - 2,000' AGL) until I found a good black bottomed one that was drifting to the northwest. I could see Jonny about two kilometers behind me slowly climbing on the ridge line.

I was climbing well just east of Beaudesert and got back up into the wispies, moving to the side to stay out of the cloud and get around some lower portions. I was going across he ground at 90 km/h, just to stay out of the cloud and head for the next one. There were lots of cu's about and mid level clouds also. Jonny was behind and below me racing along also just below the lower level clouds.

Topping up over a tip, to 3,900' I headed for the hills where I had gone down on the previous day. There were black bottom clouds along the highway, but lots of shade beneath them. There were some cu's and more sun along the ridge lines to the left. I first headed for the ridge, then for the valley, then back to the ridge as I wasn't getting any lift under the black clouds in the shade.

Jonny knew just where to go and had headed left up the ridge line. I saw him getting up a few kilometers away from me, when I was low over the end of the ridge. I moved up the ridge line and started working light rough lift that averaged 60 fpm. Jonny said it was often better on the lee side of this ridge, and I should have stayed where I was and worked my way up, but I jumped over the back and didn't find much.

I was able to glide down wind to a nice field though and land as Jonny worked an even smaller ridge line just a few hundred feet above me. I landed a few kilometers short of Boonah and Jonny decided to end his flight a little later west of Kalbar, before diving deep into the Great Dividing Range. The sky was dark, and the cloud base was low, and it didn't look all that great for getting over the range.

It's been overcast all afternoon here at the coast, with little bits of rain. I assume that it is just the heating of the ground by the sun combined with the cool air that comes off the ocean that makes it so unstable here in the morning (and too unstable in the afternoon), just like an Zapata, with its early morning cu's. Lately there have been a lot of clouds to the east over the ocean blocking the early morning sunlight (so we don't get to launch at 7 AM (again 6 AM daylight savings time)).