Sutton Bank Exped 2

from http://www.ygc.co.uk/wordpress/

Sarurday 19th.  Rain in the morning and low cloud for the rest of the day kept the gliders in the hangars, while the cool and moderate N’ly flow kept the pilots in the clubhouse, although a couple chose to fly in sunnier skies on the simulator.  The club welcomed pilots and gliders from both the Shalbourne and Stratford GCs with the hope of better conditions for the  new week starting on Sunday.

Sunday 20th.  The moderate N’ly flow continued, but the day was dry and the cloud, although low, provided sufficient gaps to allow flying to commence at 1030 hrs and continue until 1730 hrs, during which time around 30 ATs were flown.   The conditions provided some  navigation challenges,  but no one got lost.  The visiting pilots from Shalbourne and Stratford took the opportunity to get airborne with 16 launches in their own gliders, Messrs Harris and Elison putting up the longest 2 seater flight of the day as conditions improved a little in the afternoon, 27 minutes in their Puchacz, just beating the 26 minutes of Messrs Pike and Greenwood in the Janus.  No YGC single seaters were flown, the 2 K21s and the DG1000 providing flights  for the rest of those wanting to fly, including Tony Dury who made use of his Learn to Fly package to have 4 flights with John Marsh in the K21, the longest being 21 minutes.   2 pilots managed to find sufficient lift to exceed an hour in the air, Barry Kerby having 1:27 in his LS8 via a series of short cloud climbs, the cloud base not increasing much over the day.  The last flight of the day saw Bob  Calvert make use of a downwind convergence to soar for 1:07 in his Discus.

Sutton Bank Exped

Phil has asked me to add this to the blog. Apparently it was to sort out a small problem with the Puchacz, it was the smallest hammer in Rod’s toolbox.

Sounds like they’re having fun at Sutton Bank. I went to work again today………

Saturday 19th

‘Vaguely Soarable’ is how Met God David Masson forecast the day, and indeed vaguely soarable is what it turned out to be. We did our first vague soaring on the first flight when the gloop cleared enough to fly at around 11am. We flew through the rest of the day and it was soarable for most of that time, with a mix of soaring flights, cable breaks, checks and investigation of glider behaviour near the stall. Lovely to see Mark Patterson firmly back and not far off resoloing; lovely also to see John Day back and determined to get himself back to solo. Meanwhile we flew two trial lessons – I hope they’ll both be back – and those in training/improvement got down to some hard work on training and improving. The only thing missing was the rest of you – we had only enough people to operate one glider at a time for most of the day. Don’t waste the facility you’ve paid for – get out and get flying! And the DI apologises for having to slope off a little early – even I was fooled by the weather into thinking we’d be packed up by 5.15 when we did the last flight!