Author: pete smith

Sat 25th August.
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and another 16mins too to get his silver duration

meanwhile Chris and Pete’n’nClaire landed out – Pete’n’Claire in a field with a Pawnee in it and others went XC and got home or local soared.

Pics by Pete, Phil and Chris

Another good soarable weekend.

On Saturday 737 and N headed north but abandoned their task at Oxford with it being weak and blue, heading home things improved and we went for a local sight see clocking up about 200km.

Sunday was much better and we were joined by 217; stealing and slightly adapting the Interservices task we flew 300k Northampton, Bishops Cleave (north of Cheltenham), Keevil and home. Good blue/short lived cu up to Northampton, then Cu all the way home (it stopped at Pewsey) – 5kts to 5500ft QNH was not uncommon.

Closer to home it was relatively quiet, but some good soaring was had, not least by Stephen who was seen getting in a glider with only one seat! It looked to be tricky to get away mind…

Footnote from the afore mentioned Stephen:

There was a big blue hole around the club all day on Sunday the only cloud being a scrappy line sitting above Andover all day.  I did venture down to Andover to see if anything was happening but there didn’t seem to be any change to the lift or sink nearby.  This photo was taken late afternoon and a dust devil can be seen kicking off from a field being harvested (centre of the picture on the left and behind the clump of trees).

Three 300kms in one day must be a record for the club – fantastic!

While it was cross countryable, and we did, the visibility was very poor, so here’s a pic from Norway.

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 What an absolutely stunning weekend!

Strong thermals and high cloudbases. It could be diffciult to get away from low down but once you were away it was great.
I was duty on sat, Chris did 420km again for the second saturday in a row, sorry i’m not sure how many minutes it was, Phil and Carol did their declared 200km and Michal continued to try and understand UK airspace in PL. Nigel was kept very busy with trial lessons and one day courses and we ended the day with a BBQ, well all of us except Woichek in PL who having taken the last launch landed as we were well into Tony’s pudding/cake.

Sunday promised to be even better and judging from around the country it was, unfortunately we were under an uninspiring blue hole and feeling uninspired we delayed launching until the cu arrived, fell back in our tasks and massively underset them… Anyway good fun racing around the task – well tasks due to a communication error. Again some very strong climbs 8-9kts average to at least the 5500feet airspace to the north.