Very frustrating

It’s approaching 11.30 am as I type this and I’m all ready to go flying with my route and charts prepared and my GoPro batteries charged. However, there’s a clump of low cloud hanging over this area at a height of only about QNH 1100 feet according to the weather app Windy. A few minutes ago an autogire came scudding over at about that height and although he was obviously below the base it wasn’t by much and he did a pass over Malbec from north to south at only about 300 feet or so above ground level. Here’s the cloud I’m talking about.

Brive and Bergerac are both reporting light variable winds and a cloud base of 3000 feet or so, so the low cloud is fairly local. Both airfield TAFS report NOSIG (no significant change) in their weather during the day and Windy suggests that the cloud base in the whole region including here will be at around 3000 feet this afternoon with the local low cloud dispersing by about 1.30 pm.

So what to do? OK, it’s flyable right now but who wants to fly with a dismal low ceiling hanging over their aircraft? I don’t really want to – done that enough in the past. I don’t think that we’re going to see much, if any, sunshine during the day but if the local low cloud does disperse in the next hour or so, it’ll probably be worth going off then, or even a bit later, as the temperature is only forecast to rise by a couple of degrees and there will be no risk of thermic activity this afternoon.

So I guess I’ll wait an hour or so and make a decision then. Maybe it might be better to put my two planned flights back a day, I don’t know. Funny isn’t it, whenever I plan to go flying there’s always some kind of hitch… 😕

Just after I posted the above what I think was the Jodel from Belvès flew over. He will have come in from an area where the cloud base is higher than here, and he looked to be at at least 1500 feet, maybe a bit higher. So it looks as though the local low cloud is dispersing, which is encouraging. I think I might grab a quick snack for lunch and head over to Malbec.