Category: Uncategorised

Despite a promising forecast Saturday dawned drab and overcast. But thanks to Chris and others setting up early we were ready to launch as soon as cloud base started to rise by mid morning with some good launches and weak winter thermals to be had.

Northerly wind with just a hint of east and lots of it promised a classic ridge day. However, try as we might (27 attempts) we weren’t able to find it and instead we seemed to find sink everywhere. It’s an indication of how “good” the day was when there was excitiment over the first (and only) flight that achieved double digits – Peter Mason with all of 11 minutes. Highest launch I heard about was 2,000′. The ridge refusing to co-operate was disappointing but the banter was good and the donuts welcomed. Oh, and JPC was back on-line in its multi coloured finery.

Just a few of us there to see what flying we could get in before (and around) the promised showers. Started flying at 10:00 and retired to the launch point caravan shortley after 11:30. During that time we discovered that Liz had developed an aversion to height and/or turning as Graham T was subjected to several bung pulls. Also discovered it doesn’t take many to make the caravan feel crowed. When the first “shower” abated (after more tha an hour and a half) we decided to lob gliders back to the hangar with the 2 cables to hand. Only managed to lob one back (just) as the next “shower” appeared this time bearing hail. Toys were tucked away and we retired to the club house to dry off and listen to an excellent presentation by Liz on getting more out of cross-county flying. Lessons were drawn from analysis of Nigel’s Silver distance to Parham and a task from a Worlds comp Liz took part in (by coincidence a day that she won).

An interesting day with varying degrees of lift.

The wind started off as a moderate WNW which meant that only flights of about 8-10 mins were achievable as any lift was broken. Steve Gaze and myself took advantage of this to practise field landings as part of his bronze flight tests. Landing up hill into the freshly muck spread field to the east of the south end of the airfield was an experience!

For the last few flights of the day the wind went round more to the north and the ridge started to work, Paul P and Carol squeezed a respectful 17mins out of the K13 but then Chris B, flying the Vega, managed to get a whopping 41 minutes!

The evening was finished off with a presentation from Colin and myself about the pros and cons of GPS navigation and the use of XCSoar in navigating. During which one nameless person (Ok it was Chris!) fell asleep 🙂

Phil