Category: Flying Reports

On Wednesday we had a couple of visiting gliders from Lasham. One of them was a DG500 with Jeff Lynes and Simon Holland on-board. They took several attempts to leave but eventually made it back to Lasham.

Jim and Jim were duty but they had swapped. That meant that Jim got all the bad weather that Jim usually gets on his duty days but that Jim got much better conditions. But of course as Jim was Jim and Jim was, well, Jim things were somewhat confused.

On Saturday it was overcast, showery and blustery but that didn’t stop Jim (as Jim remember), Martin and Bob (as themselves) from knocking out some training circuits.

On Sunday it was much better and many people not called Jim rigged, as well as one called Jim. Jim instructed of course. Equally confused was Phil who got in the wrong Janus with Claire. In the afternoon it was hard to get away but things picked up with good, if shifty (its an F!), climbs to 3500ft. A Jim and Pete’n’Claire did short 100k tasks with it blueing out with sea air at about 4. The BBC World came to film young people’s views about the election which will then be dubbed into Russian, expect Putin as PM.

The decision to move the midweek session to Thursday proved to be correct (how could it not have been?). But a sky full of cumulus at 9 a.m., although tempting 30% of those present to rig their gliders, seldom augurs well and it was soon tamed by a gathering gloomy overcast. While kings-of -the-K8 Paul Prentice and Rob Jarvis managed to cling onto patches of buoyancy for the statutory hour, others just floundered round the circuit. The faithful ground away through the afternoon honing their skills for better days ahead and then, as often happens, the end of the day produced the goods in a most unusual way.

There being light rain from high overcast and only a few ragged Cu, Paul Bryant launched at 15:45 with a view to hangar flying the K8. By the time Charles McC and I launched at 16:00 with the same intention PB had established himself in a breath of lift over the Farm. Alan Saunders followed shortly after in The Vega.

All day there had been a breath of west wind and to the east there was now a wall of light showers. The prospect of squall line conditions occurred and Charles and I edged toward it, but with little improvement in lift. At one point a visitor (Ventus?) joined us but soon disappeared eastward into the gloom. If he didn’t have motor it must have been a soggy retrieve. The three of us hung onto little breaths of lift for a while at various stations around the strip, rarely above 1500 feet, and it became interesting to note that smoke from half a dozen scattered sources was all drifting towards us. There were now showers appearing to the south, and exploring what appeared to be a widespread mass of gently rising air we encountered little change in conditions. We eventually ‘parked’ over the warmth of Shalbourne village until the hardware was packed away and we felt it would be the decent thing to let folk get on with hangar packing.

As is so often the case – “it ain’t over ’til it’s over”.

The perfect Open Day would be a steady NNE with not much thermal activity resulting in high launches, short landings, consistent flight time and easy access from the entrance.  Add to that a steady stream of visitors but not too many so nobody has to wait too long.  For this Open Day we got a westerly, lots of thermals, showers and visitors having to travel the full length of the field periodically delaying launches.  However, we did get the steady stream of visitors several we expect to see again.  With the lift came the sink so some flights were up and straight back down whilst other struggled to keep within 15 minutes.

One visitor was making a return visit.  Four years ago Chelsea came to our Open Day with her parents and brother but lack of cash in hand meant only her brother got to fly.  Sitting waiting for take-off she admitted to being anxious but 4 years ago she was up for anything.  Into the round-out and out came an expletive – as the launch continued Chelsea relaxed (and apologised for the expletive).  We picked up a thermal and drifted over to Combe Gibbet which turned out to be Chelsea’s favourite place.  Returning through the rain to the airfield to land after 15 minutes.

This year’s 17 TL’s may only have been half the number at last year’s Open Day but it meant we avoided last year’s long waits.  In addition to this year’s 17 there were 3 friends of members flying.

Big thank you the members who turned up and enabled us to fly our visitors.  No Open Day would be complete without Claire keeping us organised and at the front line welcoming our visitors.