Taking a ‘long lunch’ on Friday afternoon from a FOGGY Dundee saw me heading north to Craigowl to test fly Nairn’s new (2nd hand) DHV 2 Ozone, joined in the 4×4 by somewhat sceptical Nairn we were 2/3rds of the way up the hill and still in thick fog!
Alan had phoned earlier to say that (at that time) visability was Ok and he could see the back of the hill from about 15 miles to the north west where he was… so I was relying on the MET reports, local knowledge and Alan’s ‘mark one eyeball’…. and yep the “plan came together”…. Dig out the sun cream, a complete dome of blue sky opened up above us in about 100ft (vertical) further up the slope… by the time we were at launch level the fog was a few 100 feet below us!
It was intresting over the next hour to watch the ebb & flow of the fog ‘lapping’ around the hill, at times the gaps had fog flowing to the north and a while later flowing back south, with the valleys on both sides of the hill full of fog. Even the front of the hill while there was a steady east drift visible all the time, localy patches were moving in oposition to the main drift, useful to see how the air mixes on light breeze days.
So not much flying to be had, just a few short test flights, but one of those days just being on hill top was enough to make it a afternoon to remember!
Murray Hay
Oh and the temp down at the farm was -3.5*c with about <100m vis in freezing fog!
Press cutting from Saturday 22nd December