Category: Expeditions

Whilst Pete, Claire and Jim were at Aboyne some other members made the (slightly shorter) trip to Portmoak. Carol, Chris, Tony P and I have been here before but it was to be an exciting and new experience for John, Jeremy and Selvam.

Over Balado Airfield where wave normally sets up, Portmoak is at the top of the Loch just beyond St Serfs island about 5-6K away. The firth of Forth is in the distance.

Tony Palmer making good use of soaring the sea breeze front. Up until then everyone else was flying circuits but Tony showed them what to do when he took the Puch up to 3,000ft and had the longest flight of the day!

Jeremy and John taking the Puch to the far end of the Loch, apparently they were trying to find a nice pub…. Kinross is hiding in the shadows. You can see how windy at ground level it was by the ripples in the water.

Out of the 9 days we were there only 1 1/2 days were lost to rain so we had plenty of flying. Consecutive good ridge days meant that wave was  around as the following show, Chris and I took the Janus along a wave bar out towards Dundee at 7500ft.

the lift was smooth and steady and with wave set out over the sea it was tempting to see how far we could go but we chickened out near the coast!

During a rare chance to fly the Janus solo I was lucky enough to contact wave over Balado Airfield as the next photos show.

The Puch was put to good use with site checks etc. but its fair to say that Jeremy and John certainly made good use of it especially as they are now both P1 mutual.

Good to see club members venturing out to other gliding clubs, those of you who have not yet done so don’t know what you are missing out on…..

 

 

Last week myself, Jim and Claire went back to Aboyne for a weeks flying accompanied by Jim’s wife Shirley and dog Sam and puppy Luke. Also coming along was Henry from PNGC and his bus load of family.

Its a very long way, no denying it, about 90mins further than Portmoak but Tim’s kind lend of his driveway meant we could tow straight from the A34, arriving at Aboyne for beer’o’clock 11 hours later.

So why did we come back? In search of wave flying certainly but mainly because its realllly pretty.

Claire tows out behind the Euromouse tug, cheap and you certainly get a lot of towing practice. They also have proper tugs.

 

Snow cover Cairngorm and the Dee valley

 

As many runways as Heathrow dont you know.

 

Jim and Shirley take N for a flight. Shirley didnt appreciate 8knot thermals.

 

While i was kindly lent an ASW27

 

Looking upriver, you can understand why one of Liz’s relatives bought a place up here (other Liz)

 

Looking down river to Aboyne town

 

Aboyne is nice, you have reserved spaces on the runway, I’m sure this one is for N not 933

 

A bit of Tetris

 

A lot of flying in thermals up to now and ridge dribble thermals but what about the wave…

A promising sky to tow into, but this was treasurers wave, (we were warned by the locals who were airborne and had to burn two stroke to 5k to get away in weak wave but nothing ventured and all that) nothing was gained, those pesky thermals breaking it up again.

But in the afternoon Jim called up to say the wave had set back up and he was climbing away so Henry and I dragged N on to the runway, actually climbed behind the Euromouse (always a good sign) and kept climbing after release, as the wave bar passed by we averaged 11kts with the needles bent round the stops and climbed up to FL130.

 

Oh and Luke, he enjoyed himself too.