Category: Flying Reports

…was a really nice weekend!

Good climbs, maybe a little blue but generally good Cu around.

On Saturday Chris did 417k, Jim 305k, Andrew 200k, Phil & Carol 150ish, Bob did Silver height,

On Sunday Claire & I did 170ish, Chris did something and Phil & John did a quick task as Phil had remembered where home was. Adrian did a silver climb to 6,500feet.

 

Some pictures below – whatever happened to England’s green and pleasant land.

Phil on mini task

Jim at the end on Sunday

My pic of the airfield from 5k

Martin topping out in the Cirrus

Phil’s pic of a very brown Newbury showground and Chieveley junction

On Sunday after a couple of dozen launches the winch gave up the ghost.  James H was quickly on the case on Monday when he removed the transmission cooler to find it couldn’t have cooled anything as it was gummed up on the outside with an 1/8” oil/dirt mix and the fan was not working.  The transmission cooler was removed, but a fracture on the inlet pipe meant it was U/S.  A call to Skylaunch secured a spare cooler/fan and UPS delivery for Wednesday morning.  James (plus helpers) fitted the new bits and we were ready to go by early afternoon.  Gliders at the launch point when freak weather delayed the start of flying – I believe the meteorological term is “rain”.

While the winch was being worked on other members set to derigging the Vega, cutting grass and working on a method of securing the hangar curtain at the bottom (and possibly other jobs that I didn’t spot).

A huge, huge thanks to James H to sorting out a problem with the winch that, without his efforts, could have grounded us for some time.

We got flying shortly after 14:00.  Circuits were the order of the day with only 4 flights (out of 27) of around 30 minutes and Colin B taking the last flight of the day in the K8, returning just over an hour later (and then only landing because he’d seen the rest of the toys being put away).

Those with an interest in stats may like to know that June was a record breaking month for number of launches in the month of June and the second highest for the number of launches in any month –  450 launches.  Previous best was 365 in 2010.  June 2010, however, clocked up more flying time compare to this June (18 hours compare to 145)

Busy blue day with circuits being the order of the day.  Lots of areas of 4+ sink but without the compensating lift – what little lift there was around was weak and didn’t stay for a full 360.  At around 14:00 there was a glimmer of hop when Paul P did a record busting (for the day!) 21 minutes but it was back to circuits for lessor mortals.  About an hour later Rob J upped the anti with 44 minutes.  For the next 3 hours about half the launches resulted in soaring flights with Colin B as top-dog with 1 hour and reporting climbs to 2,900 (Ken H and Martin S were hot on his heels but just a few minutes shorter).

We handed over to the TLE crew to fly a scout group and ended up with a total of 55 launches for the day.

 

 

 

With the new launch point control caravan and a displaced launch point (to allow some remedial field work) things had a slightly different feel.

What wasn’t different was the typical 2018 weather, grey and yuk. The wind was straight down the strip and reasonably strong allowing nice high launches but unfortunately after lunch a series of fronts, pseudo fronts, troughs and other meteorological features started to arrive; whatever they were they pushed cloudbase down and when it started to drizzle we availed ourselves of a refreshing brew in the Rivarera Cafe.

After a couple more attempts flying was abandoned only for it to clear up for 15 mins, then rain then clear up again. We lit the BBQ, waiting in doors while it heated up, before a final clearance allowed us to eat outside.