It was a typical "flight for no reason", just to get up and around the area for a little while. The forecasts had called for broken clouds at 3,000, but it had been overcast, clear and broken all day - a confused sky; VFR, but obviously with multiple layers. I launched in the direction of our local ILS runway to check a new setting on my autopilot and leveled out about 1,800 to stay below the broken layer enroute. Hmmm....nothing about the ceilings down at 2,500...but you take what you get when it comes to the weather.
Avionics checkout successfully completed, it was time to wind my way back up the coast, but the splattered sunshine on the ground drew me irresistibly to the breaks in the clouds - large, amorphous, elongated holes perfect for straight climbs at RV rates while maintaining good legal cloud clearances. Up I went, counting a few tattered layers. Cirrus and cumulous were jumbled together as if the sky simply couldn't decide how to dress for the day. Clearly the high broken layer in the Flight Levels was allowing just enough sun through to entice a little lift from the humid air, but the winds wouldn't allow any prolonged vertical development. Winter does that, even on the gulf coast....
VFR Over the Top is a favorite place for me, especially when I know I have several thousand feet of clear below the bottom ceiling and holes-aplenty to pick my descent. The layers above were tattered and varied - the edges ragged and unable to organize at a single elevation. Like hopping across a creek on random stones, I pulled and turned, climbed and dove along my way to stay well clear of the vapors. The highest top of the lower layers was only at 5,000', well within the realm of 2,000 fpm climbs in the RV, so vertical capability was unrestricted. I popped up above, then slid back down. Ahead, a marvelous sight - an arch in the clouds, miles wide and very tall.
The bottom of the arch was flat - the top of a lower layer. The top was the bottom of a layer probably 2000' above the floor, with a few miles from side to side. Imagine the St. Louis landmark, all flattened out?. Ethereal and fragile - I could see the winds rippling the edges and tearing the structure apart, even as I flew dead center through the middle, rolling as I went. Sky became cloud, became sky, became cloud -- all seen through the bubble of the RV-8.....The tattered layers re-arranged themselves as I flew, shifting here and there and changing the landscape even as I picked a hole for home.
What a marvelous opportunity we have to enjoy the nature of our atmosphere. It is truly another world, as strange and wonderful as you might find underwater, or even on a distant world. It gives thoughts of the cloud planets envisioned in fiction by the visionaries of science fiction - places where solid ground doesn't play into the development of the planet. Imagine a world where nothing is solid, and you are wafted upon the very stuff of creation. Beautiful, shifting colors from the low sun play with the shadows and create fantastic landscapes that no one has seen before and will never see again. These clouds creations exist for but a moment or two for us to enjoy - the freedom of flight, the stuff of dreams....
Paul
Avionics checkout successfully completed, it was time to wind my way back up the coast, but the splattered sunshine on the ground drew me irresistibly to the breaks in the clouds - large, amorphous, elongated holes perfect for straight climbs at RV rates while maintaining good legal cloud clearances. Up I went, counting a few tattered layers. Cirrus and cumulous were jumbled together as if the sky simply couldn't decide how to dress for the day. Clearly the high broken layer in the Flight Levels was allowing just enough sun through to entice a little lift from the humid air, but the winds wouldn't allow any prolonged vertical development. Winter does that, even on the gulf coast....
VFR Over the Top is a favorite place for me, especially when I know I have several thousand feet of clear below the bottom ceiling and holes-aplenty to pick my descent. The layers above were tattered and varied - the edges ragged and unable to organize at a single elevation. Like hopping across a creek on random stones, I pulled and turned, climbed and dove along my way to stay well clear of the vapors. The highest top of the lower layers was only at 5,000', well within the realm of 2,000 fpm climbs in the RV, so vertical capability was unrestricted. I popped up above, then slid back down. Ahead, a marvelous sight - an arch in the clouds, miles wide and very tall.
The bottom of the arch was flat - the top of a lower layer. The top was the bottom of a layer probably 2000' above the floor, with a few miles from side to side. Imagine the St. Louis landmark, all flattened out?. Ethereal and fragile - I could see the winds rippling the edges and tearing the structure apart, even as I flew dead center through the middle, rolling as I went. Sky became cloud, became sky, became cloud -- all seen through the bubble of the RV-8.....The tattered layers re-arranged themselves as I flew, shifting here and there and changing the landscape even as I picked a hole for home.
What a marvelous opportunity we have to enjoy the nature of our atmosphere. It is truly another world, as strange and wonderful as you might find underwater, or even on a distant world. It gives thoughts of the cloud planets envisioned in fiction by the visionaries of science fiction - places where solid ground doesn't play into the development of the planet. Imagine a world where nothing is solid, and you are wafted upon the very stuff of creation. Beautiful, shifting colors from the low sun play with the shadows and create fantastic landscapes that no one has seen before and will never see again. These clouds creations exist for but a moment or two for us to enjoy - the freedom of flight, the stuff of dreams....
Paul
