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We flew today because they did.
Remembrance Sunday (9th)
Saturday 1st November…..soaring season over?………Nah!
Someone forgot to tell the weather that it was November and therefore there shouldn’t be any thermals around apart from the warm clothing type!
Needless to say the Janus was duly rigged and launched into a sort of promising sky. Cloudbase was 1700ft and there were patches of broken lift which kept us aloft for around 20 minutes before a prolonged area of sink brought us back down again.
A while later the air mass had changed for the better and after releasing at 1600ft we sped to a likely looking cloud street over Fosbury and was rewarded with good lift which took us to cloudbase at around 3200ft. By running up and down the street we stayed airborne for around 1hr 20 mins during which time we encountered areas of good lift and strong sink (-8 knots in places!).
Another cracking day at Shalbourne but looking at the forecast for the rest of the week the weather has finally caught on to the fact that it is November after all 🙂
Phil
Tailend of October
Decided lack of blog entries so I’ll just do a brief summary of the days remaining in October.
Wednesday 22nd
Not a very promising looking day but second launch had Ken H with a double digit flight time (just). It was Bill O who set the time to beat with 29 minutes in the Puchacz and no one got near that. Mind, out of the 28 launches there were 7 of them in the 10 to 20 minute band.
Saturday 25th
Duty instructor Bob B was kept busy in the back seat of 10 of the 28 launches of the day. Rob J claiming “soaring god for a day” award with 15 minutes. Always good to welcome a pilot from another club – this time it was a visitor from Booker.
Sunday 26th
Looking at the log it appears to have been the day for annual checks. All, bar 2, of the 23 flights had Phil M or Carol P in the back seat. The 2 solo flights were both flown by Nigel B and were the only ones to get into double digits (15 and 16 minutes).
Wednesday 29th
Low cloud so no flying. After eating donuts (one of the benefits of Wednesday flying) boredom resulted in Peter M deciding to demonstrate the self-parking gizmo on his car. A sheet of ply was propped up against the barbeque to simulate one car and Bill C (rather bravely the rest of us thought) offered his car to act as the second car. A few loops around occurred before Peter’s car could be persuaded to have a go but we finally got to see the car parallel parking while Peter waved hi hands in the air.
Sunday 19th Oct – The Winchdrivers are revolting…
Well! The day started – as forecast by the Met Office – with a howling crosswind. It was – as forecast by me – also thermic with great-looking streets showing evidence of wave influence. First launch with John proved it nicely soarable and indeed other soaring flights followed. However – also as forecast – the wind picked up and got gustier during the day, and in spite of our best efforts laying off as well as swapping the ‘flying’ cable chutes for the small ones, we were unable to keep the falling cables reliably clear of the electric fence. After the hard-working winch crew had retrieved one not terribly well laid-off cable from the trees and kit in Dingley Dell, and at who knows what personal cost had retied the sheep fence a few times (being unable to find the power source and turn it off!), they staged a revolt – a deputation came up to the control van and said it couldn’t continue. So, for the first time I’ve known it in a westerly, crosswind limits made us scrub the day. Mike – who was sat in the glider ready for his first flight when we scrubbed – and Tony are at the top of the list for next time!