Meanwhile, south of the border, Wednesday is a flying day – and a quite reasonable looking one at that. I should maybe qualify that by saying we could see good looking cu the north, south, east and west and we started the day sitting in the middle of a blue hole. Whilst rigging his Pilat Justin B asked me if I though a 2 hour flight would be possible and I encouragingly said “yes” but thought “hmm, depends”.
Shortly after midday Bill C failed to immediately return in the K8 so Chris K pulled his Cirrus online, shortly followed by me in the LS3. The ability to scratch and determination to do so was needed but with those, climbs to 3,200′ were possible (Chris K claiming that particular prize). Cloud base was very variable and was down 2,200′ at times and in places. Justin didn’t manage his 2 hours but did do over an hour to go towards his cross country endorsement. Having said a 2 hour was possible I felt obliged to stay airborne for at least that time and that proved to be the longest flight of the day. In total just over 14 hours of flying was clocked up by “the Wednesday boys” (I’ll skip the aka).
Club exped to Portmoak Tuesday 29th
As the locals predicted Tuesday was going to be a ridge day. With a light SW wind we were a little pessimistic of how it would perform but at least with Cu forming overhead we had the option of having a thermal flight if nothing else.
As usual the gliders which were left rigged overnight were readied for flight and we towed them over to the eastern launch run which was a novelty as the last two days flying were launching from the west. This direction is amazing as at the top of the launch you are over the loch.
View of Bishop from the launch point.
If you look closely you will see the Vega bottom right being flown by Nigel and in the top left is the Puchacz with Rod and Paul.
Nigel enjoying his first ridge flight in the Vega, the launch point is just around the corner of Bishop in line with St Serf island (in distance).
Below is a view from the same spot a little higher (and closer) than Nigel was at.
Colin, a member at Challock, showed us the workings of the jet sustainer fitted to his Shark.
The noise from this really is something prompting the CFI to ask him to start it up further away7 from the airfield next time……………I want one!
The ridge at Portmoak is truly amazing to run along and it is clear from the smiles that everyone thought this was the highlight of the week. Nigel, Jon and Wavey all had ridge flights over an hour, Paul and Rod in the Puch and Carol and I in the Janus clocked up around 3 hours apiece.
All in all a very good day and a lot of fun was had by all and I know that some of you have seen us flying in real time on the internet.
Today (Wednesday) is a non flying day but we hope to get into lee-wave tomorrow afternoon.
Club exped to Portmoak
The first two days were not flyable due to low cloud but on Sunday Carol and I managed to get every ones site checks done so it was time for Nigel, Jon and James to give the Vega a go.
With the easterly wind soaring times were in single figures but its fair to say that the circuit out over Loch Leven was different to what we are used to at Shalbourne, a video will be posted when I get back.
Despite the short flight times everyone is thoroughly enjoying the experience of flying here. The locals are very friendly and helpful, we are effectively a club within a club and have access to a tug when we need one…..only have to ask and a tuggy comes to site to launch us!
Also they say if it gets busy they will arrange for us to have our own launch run and winch………can’t get better than that!
Paul had an aerotow check with Carol in the Puchacz and was cleared for solo aero-towing as was James Walters who had a check in a K21 with one of the Portmoak instructors.
Even though easterly winds are not ideal Carol and I took a 2,000ft tow to explore the Lee Wave that had set up a short distance from the west face of the Bishop. Steady 2 knot climbs gave good views of the scenery below until suddenly the gap started to close in. Despite descending quickly the last few hundred feet was done in cloud so both of us gained our cloud flying rating 🙂
As you can see Rod and Maureen visited one of the many local whiskey distilleries and Rod could not resist buying some…………………….. have a look at the label!
According to the locals today (Tuesday) is promising to be a good day so hopefully I will be able to report some longer flights.
St George’s Day
Driving through Hungerford on the way to the club I began to wonder if I’d stumbled on an EDL rally until I realised it was St George’s Day – George Cross flags every where. Hive of activity when I got to the club including the toilets being cleaned. I promised Chris not to let on who did it in case his wife reads the blog.
Then it was time to fit in some flying – the steady wind down the strip promised some great launches. Unfortunately the 1,300′ cloudbase never gave us a chance to find out what might have been possible. It didn’t take long before there was no one else waiting to fly and the hangar was packed as the rain settled in.
Updating my logbook just now I discovered that I clocked up my 5,000th launch – 7 minutes solo in the Puchacz was not exactly a special flight to mark the occasion.