Category: Midweek

A beautiful last Wednesday in October – almost shirt sleeves weather – with the entire club fleet online and no less than four  instructors offering training and entertaining a youth group who came along so fly with us. The cloud base soon lifted after Bob’s brief sojourn ‘on top’ after which there was hardly a pause in launching. The day ended with the brilliant setting sun dictating right hand circuits until it’s rays faded behind a distant cloud bank, at which point the waiting Puchacz canopy misted over in the most dramatic way in less than two minutes.

There were brief opportunities to soar, but few flights lasted more than twenty minutes, so what was the point of it all? Well half a dozen youngsters who deserved something special went away smiling. A few new members got a step closer to going solo, while those further along honed their skills. Everyone enjoyed the day and it raised another £400 or so to brace the club coffers against expense of the coming winch rebuild.

The sky looked quite inviting around midday with puffy cumulus permitting short thermalling flights being blown along in a brisk east wind. Enthusiasm waned as the sky turned blue until Bob and Ken H discovered some sky hooks. A small wave bar was discovered over the western ridge which persisted for several hours up to the 2500ft inversion. Residual instability complicated matters, but with judicious use of whatever kind of lift one happened to blunder into it was possible to linger in the more or less permanent patch of lift.

Maybe small beer for some, but it beats stripping down winches:-)

This was the first of our planned Wednesday evening sessions with the aim of concentrating on specific exercises, in fact those who attended were working towards “off checks” or “Bronze” flying tests.

Field landings, cable breaks and stalling exercises were the order of the evening and I’m pleased to report that everyone enjoyed the flights and seemed to get a lot out of it.

Many thanks to Rod for agreeing to drive the winch and to Carol for being the other instructor.

We flew a total of 17 flights, the last of which took off at 20:54.

What a difference to the previous Wednesday – thermic from the start.  Cloud base starting off three times higher than the previous week.  About a third of the 30 launches were an hour or more.  Jonty H reported a climb to 4,000 and Steve B took longest flight honours with just under 2 hours.  Jonty’s friend from Sydney experienced Aussie like climbs at 5 up on the average (a choper pilot who was a bit taken aback by nose down approach on finals).

Modest turnout for such a glorious day with only one private glider rigged but 3 folks turned up for Trial Lessons.  One who was, briefly, a member in 2006.  Also returning, after his recent enforced layoff, was our very own Colin B looking fit and well.  It took him very little time to organise the next grass cut (and clear some of the area).