Category: Uncategorised

Today followed the recent theme, blue skies at breakfast, lovely fluffy clouds at elevenses and 8/8 overcast at lunch. Whilst we had our elevenses the thermals were good and strong, but by lunchtime we were all descending back to earth. The billion trillion zillions of flies that committed suicide on my leading edge surely didn’t help!

Oh and the rope – well following a cable break the end of the cable managed to hide itself within the cable on the drum, all you could see was good cable but no end! A dozen minutes of searching seamed to be of no avail but finally Ken Reid uplooped enough wire to find the pesky little end,

We were still in the same air as Wednesday, and so we got the same sort of conditions. (Although we weren’t flying Thursday and Friday, they seemed to be a repeat of Wednesday too). Of course, it wasn’t exactly the same; today we had a good flight to start the day, then dead for a few hours, but this time the early afternoon flights were reporting good soaring under the spreadout, before it died again. We thought we’d finished at about 5pm, but then a visitor asked for an extra flight, and Jim decided to use the left-over cable rather than just wind it in. Just then a bit of blue sky obligingly let the sun shine on the airfield and they got away for a half-hour, until guilt at keeping the ground-crew waiting made them land.

Long(ish) pause was not just down to the weather as we did get one noteworthy day on the 19th. All up and down until Carol and Phil flew the Janus to set “the bar” at 20 minutes. An hour later Pete and Rob notched “the bar” up another 4 minutes. Back to circuits until I took the Vega (can’t bear to see a glider on the ground and a cable and nobody using it) and went away for over an hour (only brought it back as I was getting twinges from my wallet). It was difficult to make any headway into wind. The Janus launched shortley after me and seemed to using me as a thermal spotter until it broke free and pushed further into wind than me. They made a bid to get to Lynham but the clouds ran out so returned after an hur and a half. Towards the end of the day Keith collared me to take the back seat as he thought he might get a longer flight that way (there had only been one other soaring flight after the Janus had launched and quite a few circuits). Turns out he was right and we had a soaring flight as did Trevor in the Vega. Drove home along the A4 looking at a sky better than anything we’d seen all day.

With the forecast for Wednesday being distinctly poor, and Tuesday excellent, we changed our midweek flying day accordingly. I’m writing this on Wednesday, looking at the low cloud and drizzle, so I can say with certainty it was a good call. Everyone soared for at least a half hour, although a couple launched into sink and had to try again – one was Richard, but he enjoyed 3hrs in his new Vega after a relight A couple of new members had a good taste of what soaring is about.. The Janus got to Radstock and back. All-in-all, a great day.