The day after my declared 300 km also seemed to be promising so I left my glider rigged and even though I was quite tired, I decided to fly again. The weather should have been similar to Saturday - but we'll see very soon that it was not true at all.
I took off around 11.30 and I spent nearly 2 hours very close to the airfield and very low as well (500 m QNH, I opened the wheel already to get ready for landing...) but miracles do happen (or is that my persistance?) so finally I had the chance to start my flight to the east. The weather was really strange because north and south wind met on some ridges so it was normal to be above some little clouds that day.
The max. altitude in the "pedemontana" region was around 2200 m, and that is a good height, I feel confident with such a cloud base. The difficulty of the start is always the airspace near (Lugano CTR) because they have so much traffic so they often send us away from the best working thermal hotspots because of arriving IFR traffic.
After Mt. Generoso I chose to remain a bit more to the north so I went to Sasso Gordona and then Mt. San Primo. At San Primo I was the lowest among 3-4 other gliders when I arrived, but the thermals worked well so I also reached the cloudbase quickly. I was a bit disappointed to see that it was again not possible to arrive to the top of Grigna because it was covered with clouds. I went to "Corni di Canzo" and then I crossed Lago di Como again to try the southern region under Grigna... it did not seem very good and indeed it did not work so I returned to "Corni di Canzo" to play with the clouds again. I did the max. altitude and I did not stop until Mt. Bollettone, I just slowed down under the cumulus which was above Cornizzolo. Mt. Bollettone always works well, so as usually, I stopped here to enjoy some strong thermals. The next stop was Monte St. Giorgio as I decided that I will cross the CTR of Lugano in order to go to the west. I needed to wait 5-10 mins to have the authorization but it was not difficult as there were some enormous clouds above these mountains and they let me to wait around 0 m/s.
In the CTR I chose a nice cloud close to Lago di Ghirla and I went to Sette Termini. Here I met Daniele and while circling together he took some super photos of me in the air! After this I crossed Lago Maggiore and I tried the spot "Albergone" but I need to admit that I was already quite tired at this point. Furthermore, Daniele warned me to be careful with the South wind on the way back to home (20-30 km/h around 1500 m).
I lost quite a lot of altitude coming back home but I landed without any problem. My persistance paid-off again, I did a nice little flight so I was happy with the results. Though in my head I had another thought: I could have done the 3000 m altitude gain for the gold badge this day among the higher mountains?
If you want to see my flight on OLC/weglide, you can find it here:
OLC Flight information - Adrienn Kiss (HU) - 18.05.2025 (onlinecontest.org)
157 km · Adrienn Kiss · Calcinate del Pesce 05/18/2025 (weglide.org)
