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Looking at the top cover and change in conditions from Saturday you would have been forgiven for thinking that Sunday was not going to offer much in the way of soaring……….how wrong you were!

As Nigel needed to be signed off to go on his BI course we took a couple of launches in the Puchacz expecting to fly circuits as the previous flights had been less than 10 mins. Our first flight lasted 17 minutes and the second a whole 40 minutes! The lift was so good (4-6 kts) Nigel took the one thermal to 4,000 ft and finished off his BI training……….well done Nigel 🙂

Flying JPC Rod Harris managed a solo flight of 40 minutes, Mark Patterson got 1 hr 2 mins also in JPC but Graham Tanner flying with Jim Clarke in the Puchacz flew the longest with 1 hr 7 mins.

Oh and Jon Scott was introduced to the wonderful world of cable breaks by Jim!

Phil

The Easter weekend rescued March from being our worst month in 6 years (my stats don’t go back further than that).  It was narrowly better than our previous worst March for number of launches (by 2) but far worse for flying hours of 17.5 compare to previous worst of 22 hours (all other years have been between 60 and 90 hours).  Hardly surprising with no flying between the 6th and the 27th.  With only 5 flying days in the month that’s the lowest of any month in the past 6 years – matched only by (you guessed it) January this year.
Enough of this gloom – fingers crossed for an Awesome April.

After a couple of good days we weren’t expecting too much but the Lasham weather guru had forecast thermals by 10:00 BST.  With 8/8 cover and low it then dawned us what the date was – April Fools Day!  The few of us there admired Alan P’s Olly, had lunch and then took the Puchacz down to throw at the sky.  1,500′ in a 80 degree cross-wind and still 100′ or so below cloud came as a pleasant surprise.  Certainly plenty of height for the annual checks that a couple of folks were wanting.  Some scraps of lift around but nothing substantial enough to soar in and substantial lift would have been needed to compensate for the drift.  As the afternoon progressed the wind picked up and landings got more lively.  After 8 launches we’d had enough and packed the toys away.

After a string of damp weekends the forecast for the Easter weekend was dry at last. Everyone was complaining that it was bitterly cold, however there is an upside to cold spring days as a little sun on the ground can generate some really good good thermals.

Saturday was largely overcast so only a few people managed to get into usable lift. Easter meant that a number of members were away on family duties but we still managed over 20 flights on the day.

Easter Sunday dawned with clear skys and the start of British Summer Time giving an incentive to get to the airfield early. The combination of sun on cold ground did exactly what was expected and two of our new members were treated to some extended soaring practice with the vario showing 8 kts up and the altimeter reaching 4400′ above site. Unfortunately the overcast returned in the afternoon making getting established more difficult.

Nice to have a bank holiday weekend without the usual rain. great to have some super thermals.