In North Italy the best months for gliding are March, April and May. In the past years the season started a bit later so often we had the chance to fly cross-country in June as well - but unfortunately this year June was not very generous so far (and indeed it was possible to do some nice flights already in March). High temperatures, extreme humidity, dirty air, strong inversion - these are the typical summer conditions if you fly from Calcinate - and the blue sky of the high mountains is often unreachable. 

But it cannot stop a determined pilot who dreams about flying during the week... so on Sunday early in the morning I was driving on the highway in the direction of the airfield. It was important to listen to the weather forecast of our 'meteoman', Piero (always at 9.30 am) because there were some NOTAMs for an area very close to Calcinate because of the World Hang Gliding Championship. After this we started to rig the gliders: first a JS-1 and then my ASW15b. Even though I do not like this very hot weather, my glides does: the rigging was very smooth and quick. 

As we knew that we need to wait for the good weather, we had an early lunch together at the airfield's bar: they know that pilots like simple & light food before flying so while some of us chose the classic ham-cheese toast, I ate a salad with mozzarella. Hours of waiting might be frustrating, but we had a good time together under the wings of our gliders, we laughed a lot.

After 1 pm the director of the airfield arrived to tell us that one of the towplanes need to return to its home airfield (Masera - this is where I bought my glider) so we should take-off. Well, it was already late so there was no point in waiting anymore. The conditions were not the ones promised to us by xctherm: the max. altitude was only around 1350 m and the thermals were very-very weak. After a while I decided to try the peaks in the CTR of Lugano but that was a mistake: I did not find anything and I got very low. To make things worse, there was SSW wind (10-15 km/h) which was disturbing the thermals. I found myself again just 250 m above the airfield together with a Discus b in a very weak thermal. But who am I to give up?! And as usually, the determination paid off, that thermal got stronger, I increased the banking angle and I succeeded to reach the top again. What a pity that in the meantime the clouds started to disappear and with that low altitude in the blue it was more and more difficult to catch good lifts. 

I completed the shortest flight distance of the season - but some little pieces of satisfaction were mixed among my feelings for the day. The "never giving up" attitude gave some power and a shy smile on my face after landing. Expectations were clearly much higher than the reality - 2-2.5 m/s lifts with 2000 m cloud base were just a dream for most of us. 

The training part of the day did not end at this point, we needed to de-rig my glider - each wing weighs 71 kg so it is a nice exercise under the sun with extreme humidity. And even though the conditions seem to be similar again for this weekend, I have an eye on the forecast - because I already miss flying!