Category: Flying Reports

Early birds BI training had a slight setback on Sunday. After 3 flights the misty foggy stuff rolled in and put a temporary halt to proceedings……

 

 

Thanks to Rowland for the photos.

The flights may have been short but it was still a splendid day.  Unseasonably warm, lots of sunshine, a gentle breeze down the strip and Tony’s home baking (salted caramel chocolate cake) – what more could one ask for at this time of year?  OK, enough wind to kick-up against the ridge would have been an improvement.  With 4 SUGC skipping lectures the average age dropped significantly – not sure if Wednesday’s can now qualify as “old farts day”.

Alan P and Paul P rigged their Swallow and EUF came back online (thanks to all the work done by Andy B and his glamorous assistants Bill C and James H).  With 4 instructors to hand (Ken P, Peter E, Colin B and myself) the 2 seaters were kept busy and we all got a lunch break (a different times!).  With the longest flights being a mere 9 minutes (Paul B and Rob J) we got in lots of launches – where “lots” = 44.  Those launches made October a record breaking month with the most launches in October.  Previous best being 2007 with 252 which compares to this months 284 (and there are still 3 possible flying days to fit in October).  However, in terms of flying time most of the Octobers in the last 10 years beat it.

The day ended with a rather fine sunset and for the drive home a big ole moon.

 

Ain’t they pretty?

Some debate about cloud streets on Wednesday. And as the name Tom Bradbury gained no recognition here’s what he says on the subject.

Cumulus streets usually occur:

a) when there is an inversion or stable layer limits the tops of the clouds
b) when the wind speed is stronger than average, and
c) when the wind speed increases with height through the convective layer.

Whatever the theory Bill Cook made the most of the streets by pressing upwind in the K8 almost as far as Newbury .

Video & Pictures from mine and Claire’s trip to Aboyne. Flew and soared 3 days out of 6, on the middle day Aboyne had 10 diamond height claims and on the final day several pilots flew to Skye and back, some of them twice, we didn’t push quite that high and couldn’t get that far!