Category: Flying Reports

Someone forgot to tell the weather that it was November and therefore there shouldn’t be any thermals around apart from the warm clothing type!

Needless to say the Janus was duly rigged and launched into a sort of promising sky. Cloudbase was 1700ft and there were patches of broken lift which kept us aloft for around 20 minutes before a prolonged area of sink brought us back down again.

A while later the air mass had changed for the better and after releasing at 1600ft we sped to a likely looking cloud street over Fosbury and was rewarded with good lift which took us to cloudbase at around 3200ft. By running up and down the street we stayed airborne for around 1hr 20 mins during which time we encountered areas of good lift and strong sink (-8 knots in places!).

Another cracking day at Shalbourne but looking at the forecast for the rest of the week the weather has finally caught on to the fact that it is November after all 🙂

Phil

Cloudbase on Saturday was initially a bit low and with the forecast of rain by mid afternoon many thought we were a bit daft to rig the Janus.

We took our first launch just as what appeared to be an very low but active street was passing diagonally over the winch and released along the downwind edge of it at around 1400ft. With one wing tip in the side of the cloud we cruised up and down the street in zero until eventually we hit sink and had to land but not until we had clocked up around 13 minutes.

Our second flight was a lot shorter as we had to abort the launch due to low cloud.

But our Third flight was a bit different……………

Cloudbase was starting to rise and soon after release we contacted a thermal which after some serious scratching took us to cloudbase at around 1500ft.

 During the flight Cloudbase rose significantly and the lift became more predictable meaning we could take in Andover and Newbury even reaching the dizzy heights of 3,000ft! During the flight we noticed a cloud street has set up over the hill to the south of the airfield and by flying along underneath it climbed without turning with 4.8kts showing on the averager travelling a distance of some 5k towards Thruxton.

It just goes to show that even in October conditions can be far better than forecasted and both of us were quite pleased with our 2hrs 20mins 🙂

Phil