Wednesday 27th – better than forecast
Following the early rain we were relieved to see the field rapidly drying out in a brisk SSW wind, the WX check proving it to be soarable from the start. According to ‘Bradbury’ the forecast, with overnight min at 13 and max 17 degrees promised little in the way of cloudbase, but it was soon obvious that the forecasters had got it wrong when Peter E and new member Frank Duke climbed away to 3500ft. Frank was so chuffed that he parted with a cheque for membership plus a years-worth of flying. Nice one Peter!
As the afternoon wore on, darkening skies to the west made it increasingly likely that we were going to get wet. But the best was yet to come! Despite much encouragement there were no takers for the Vega, so – spying the possibility of a squall line I launched, scratched and went hunting. By now a clearly defined squall line lying WSW to ENE had formed over Shalbourne.
For the next half hour I literally hammered up and down the edge, from Burbage to Kintbury, in and out of rain showers, close to rough air speed with my head and backside alternately hitting the canopy and the seat.
Behind the front the bonfire smoke in the valley showed that the wind had veered to WNW. Today’s synoptic chart forecast a trough across southern England at midday which would tie in with the change in wind direction. RASP shows a similar pattern at the same time.
So this frontal change in airmass was sufficient to kick off deep convection and heavy rain on one side and sunshine on the other. Yipee!
Now imagine for a moment that I saw the Ka8 flying much closer to the front, in and out of rapidly forming puffs of cloud – and that the pilot entered a ‘puff’ and found there was no way out. He might well find himself being sucked up into a CuNim in pouring rain with the vario off the clock and within sixty seconds having no idea of up, down or sideways. Fortunately my hypothetical pilot quickly freezes the controls and opens the airbrakes which are fortunately effective enough to offset the lift.
Of course you wouldn’t do that – would you?
Task Week Mid-point
Only 3 of the Task Weekers appeared and one of those only came to derig his glider. However, a few (but only a few) of the Wednesday Boys appeared. Fresh SSWly straight up the strip promised rather high launches. Unfortunately the cloudbase at around 1,500′ limited the opportunity to take full advantage. A few were lucky enough to launch when there was a gap in the cloud to enjoy a magical flight flying along the corridors between clouds. A pair of Martin’s turned up looking for a trial lesson and were delighted with their flights..
Paul B broke into double digits with his 11 minute flight which nobody managed to better before the skies opened and dumped lots of wet stuff on us.
Task Week Update
Monday:
First day of task week and the weather is not being helpful as Carol and I had to reset our task as conditions were a bit challenging. There were some good climbs in places but there were large gaps in-between.
We managed to complete RIV-WAN-DEV-RIV for just over 100k but only because we took advantage of a top up NE of Devizes.
Once established we noticed that the source of lift was a burning Combine Harvester and tractor/trailer, we could smell the burning tyres at 3500ft!
Steve Barber and Alan Holden, both in ASW15’s, found conditions pretty poor north of the M4 so unfortunately had to curtail their tasks.
Tuesday:
Despite RASP predicting fantastic conditions Tuesday was in fact worse than Monday 🙁 Lift was hard to find under the clag that was until Colin, in the LS3, latched on and squeezed 18mins out of his flight. This spurred the rest of us to launch and, despite valiant efforts by Chris and Steve O, Carol and I managed to stay aloft for 56 mins.
All in all a rather disappointing day but I’m pleased to say that John Douglas successfully transitioned to the Vega and had 3 enjoyable flights.
The rest of the week looks “unsettled” so hopefully we can get a bit more flying in.