Category: Flying Reports

By late morning the thermals were working well with Duty Instructor Ken Porter reporting 6 knot climbs during his weather check flight so the Duo, LS7 and Janus declared a 170km task of RIVar, DEVizes, LASham clubhouse, MARlborough, RIVar.

The run down to Devizes was not too bad with both good climbs and strong sink in places but for Carol and I  the run to Lasham was not so quick, despite being downwind, as there were some large blue areas for us to jump.

Lasham was eventually turned and we headed back towards Marlborough.

We got stuck again over Tot Hill Services and after wasting a load of time trying to gain enough height to jump to the next cloud we finally made the trip to Marlborough, the leg from Marlborough to Rivar was very quick as by now the good lift was back.

Ken and Bill missed out going to Marlborough as Ken’s bladder was in need of emptying so after turning Lasham they landed back at Rivar,  we  got round in a very slow 3hrs 31 mins but Chris was fastest with 2hrs 40 mins 🙁

With hind sight we should have declared a task further to the  NW as the air was better that way but that aside it was still a great flight……very enjoyable in places!

Phil

Not up to the previous day but some soaring was possible.  However, we probably spent more time clearing wheel boxes which got clogged with the freshly cut grass than we did in the air.  I have never experienced such comprehensive, and solid, clogging from grass.  Richard D in the LS3-17 came up with a sure-fire way of avoiding grass in the wheel box – don’t put the wheel down.

We probably would have clocked up more than the 21 launches that day as we put the toys away fairly early (plus there were the grass clearing delays between launches).  Everybody got to fly so nobody missed out.
It was a day for showing “old dogs new tricks” as the 3 longest flights of the day were made by our newest qualified pilots (Tony C 39 mins; John D 44 mins; Andrew P 1:13).

As we were leaving the field the “heavy squad” appeared with large agricultural Tonka toys to cut the rest of the field and gather the grass – phew!

The weather man was spot on this week with Wednesday utter rubbish and Thursday fairly promising.  Always a risk moving from Wednesday for midweek flying as it’s a bit of a lottery as to who can get out to play.  Fortunately, enough folks were tempted along.  First launch was Jonty taking 33 minutes over a check flight as he was having so much fun climbing up the side of clouds and whizzing through the gaps and arches between the clouds – magical.

Everyone enjoyed a soaring flight – well, almost everyone – the sink gods must have targeted Tony P that day.  Just a modest 14 launches (there were only 10 of us there) but we clocked up 5 hours of flying.