Posted on

Saturday 6th April

With miserable March disappearing over the horizon Saturday morning dawned promising a  change in fortunes and the good soaring conditions which were forecasted a few days beforehand didn’t let us down.

The change in the weather brought many members out of hibernation and the parking area was full by late morning.

 First flight to test out JPC after it’s ARC renewal was at 9:30 the launch taking me to 2,100 ft with cloudbase at 2,800 ft. As the day progressed the lift and cloudbase increased to such an extent that we had to put a limit on soaring as it was quite possible to stay up for quite some time.

With all the club gliders in the air at once this was the scene at the launch point..

With good launches and strong climbs to excess of 4,500 ft we managed 42 launches with 18 flights managing a flight of over 1 hour.

Chris B and Nigel B took the Puchacz on its first XC flight of the season to Lyneham and back surprising us all by returning by air 🙂 Jim C took the Nimbus for a run round Devizes, Didcot and Oxford, Richard D took the LS3 away for a few hours and Darren M took me and JPC (almost) to the M4 junction at Hungerford at a reassuring (but unnecessary!) 4,800 ft 🙂

Finally congratulations must go to John G who was sent solo by Carol

Phil

Posted on

Miserable March

The Easter weekend rescued March from being our worst month in 6 years (my stats don’t go back further than that).  It was narrowly better than our previous worst March for number of launches (by 2) but far worse for flying hours of 17.5 compare to previous worst of 22 hours (all other years have been between 60 and 90 hours).  Hardly surprising with no flying between the 6th and the 27th.  With only 5 flying days in the month that’s the lowest of any month in the past 6 years – matched only by (you guessed it) January this year.
Enough of this gloom – fingers crossed for an Awesome April.

Posted on

Easter Monday

After a couple of good days we weren’t expecting too much but the Lasham weather guru had forecast thermals by 10:00 BST.  With 8/8 cover and low it then dawned us what the date was – April Fools Day!  The few of us there admired Alan P’s Olly, had lunch and then took the Puchacz down to throw at the sky.  1,500′ in a 80 degree cross-wind and still 100′ or so below cloud came as a pleasant surprise.  Certainly plenty of height for the annual checks that a couple of folks were wanting.  Some scraps of lift around but nothing substantial enough to soar in and substantial lift would have been needed to compensate for the drift.  As the afternoon progressed the wind picked up and landings got more lively.  After 8 launches we’d had enough and packed the toys away.

Posted on

Easter Treat

After a string of damp weekends the forecast for the Easter weekend was dry at last. Everyone was complaining that it was bitterly cold, however there is an upside to cold spring days as a little sun on the ground can generate some really good good thermals.

Saturday was largely overcast so only a few people managed to get into usable lift. Easter meant that a number of members were away on family duties but we still managed over 20 flights on the day.

Easter Sunday dawned with clear skys and the start of British Summer Time giving an incentive to get to the airfield early. The combination of sun on cold ground did exactly what was expected and two of our new members were treated to some extended soaring practice with the vario showing 8 kts up and the altimeter reaching 4400′ above site. Unfortunately the overcast returned in the afternoon making getting established more difficult.

Nice to have a bank holiday weekend without the usual rain. great to have some super thermals.