It was 34 degrees this AM and crystal clear, and I had a little flight down into the valley to take some pictures of the local flooding. I took off with 1800 prop RPM (about 4000 RPM with the Rotax 912) letting the grade on my runway help out, and then I had a 1000' to burn off immediately after liftoff so I went back to flight idle and floated on down into the valley. After taking the shots, I was flying up alongside one of the many ridges in the valley and to my surprise was getting some pretty good lift, like 300 FPM. This was a hillside that had been in the sun since dawn, but it was still only 10:30, way to early for thermals to be popping off. Not today though, lift was everywhere, and keeping the throttle at 1700 to 1800 prop, slowing to 38 to 42 mph and dropping one notch of flaps and working at it, I eventually got up to 8500' (from 4800'). Sure enough, up on top the upper ridge lines there were some backcountry skiers hitting the new snow from 2 days ago!
I have never seen it so "lifty" so early, smooth air too, so smooth I was hitting my own wake turbulence while circling, little puffy cumulous clouds were popping everywhere. I wrapped it up with a HELLO to a neighbor who was discing his fields,(
) and 3 or 4 hillside landings and then home, I never got more then a couple miles from my place. Total fuel burn 2.5 gallons and flight time of 1.3 hrs with a gain of about 4K feet. Once a hang glider pilot always one I guess
