He has a chance at the Swift record. Will he beat Gary's ultra light sailplane record set yesterday? I'll update the Oz Report as soon as I hear.

Robin holds the current official Swift world record at 715 km (http://records.fai.org/hang_gliding/current.asp?id1=o-2&id2=1). 444 miles. But Manfred has the unofficial record at 483 miles (http://ozreport.com/10.147#3)

Andre landed at Carrizo Springs, 100 miles out. We don't know if he was put down or landed because he thought that he should come back for another try tomorrow.

Pete didn't fly after flying 180 miles yesterday to Uvalde and stopping when he didn't think that he could make it to his declared goal 30 miles south of Big Spring. Paul launched late and landed 45 miles out near Laredo. I landed at highway 359 (36 miles out) when I got no lift under a thick cirrus cloud. Haven't heard about Ken Robinson on the U2.

Again the forecast for tomorrow is awesome.

We woke up to mid level clouds across a large swath of Texas from Zapata north and east a few hundred miles. We had seen something similar a few days earlier and saw that it burned off by 10 AM, so we went out to the airport a little later than 8 AM to be ready just in case.

The sky did clear up, except, of course, for the strong over running that put the cumulus streets every where, although with seemingly low bases. I waited until 10:08 to launch and was the first one off once again, even though I was 25 minutes later than my launch the day before.

Russell took me due east and then I went on glide to the north northeast to go toward the last cloud street that I could get to that would put me just at cloud base as I got there. I found that cloud street and started working lift just a few hundred feet under the clouds. This was a much higher start than the first two days. I was climbing at 2,000' AGL and base was another 500'.

The street just to my west was looking really good. The best I had seen in six years. Solid shadow off to the north northwest, unfortunately aiming right for the air space.

I was not getting up to cloud base, but hanging in there under my street and watching the landing areas out in front of me. My street was headed for a large area of Mesquite 10 miles out from Zapata and as I wasn't getting up, I decided to jump back to the west to get under the better looking street that had nice landing areas under it. I was already coming up on the St. Ygnacio road and I do better thermaling when I have a safe landing area nearby.

Down to 900' AGL, I hooked into the good stuff and just drifted and circling under the street getting up to the misty bits at 2,700' AGL. The street was rock solid for at least fifteen miles and to stay out of the clouds I had to run the right edge of it, going under it now and then if I lost some altitude. Often I had to fly as fast as I could to stay down out of the clouds. I don't remember ever having to do this so early in Zapata. It was great to have such strong lift.

But this could only last so long as I needed to jump back east again to a much less developed street in order to keep out of the airspace, which was a long ways ahead, but none the less approaching.

The best part of flying in Zapata is in the early morning when you first do a nice long glide, then you work as hard as you can to stay up in light lift, identifying at the same time the possible landing areas, and trying to track the gravel roads so you'll know how to get retrieved. You just don't want to land, so you do everything that you can to stay up. It is very exciting and really focuses your attention.

You also have to keep track of your track so that you can get around Laredo legally without hitting some commercial jet. So there are a lot of balls in the air, to go along with the clouds and looking for lift. Very tense. I love it.

The lift to the east was incoherent and weak. I had to keep searching under the cu's to find something and to stay up as I was in an area 20 miles out that would have required a length retrieval. Staying in the air in weak lift is better than going down.

Finally after almost ten minutes I found a coherent thermal and climbed up to cloud base at 2,500' AGL. Still this cloud street was also heading for air space which was now eleven miles away, so I had to jump once again to the east. But first I had to make sure that I could make it to highway 359, the next east west paved road and easy retrieval.

I found a good thermal under the street and climbed to 3,100' AGL, the highest so far, so that I could make the jump to the east. I headed toward the clouds to the east after making cloud base, but as I do so I noticed that the ground below me is now shaded, and not from the cumulus clouds, but from a patch of thick cirrus high above me.

The cu's out ahead in the next street are thin and white, not black bottomed. I flew under them, but got no lift. Down to 1,100' AGL over 359 I can't take the chance of going six miles to the next highway with few landing areas in between and land at 359.

Tomorrow, yet another chance to fly at the best cross country flying site in the world.