With high pressure settled over the UK and an east/north-easterly wind in
place from Wednesday, the forecasts all week held out the prospect of wave for
Sunday – and so it was with a spring in our step that we leapt up to the
airfield where, initially, the sky was clear as a bell. That was to change all
too soon, however, as the Met Office forecast revealed that a 'weather feature'
(ie. cold front) would sink slowly across the SW, pushing a bank of cloud ahead
of it.
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No, this is NOT the sky we saw on Sunday –
this is the sky we SHOULD have seen on Sunday... |
Fortunately, the base of the cloud didn't descend to the 800ft amsl
predicted, but remained high enough for us to continue launching (ie. 1,900ft
amsl). With no visitors to host today, it was a bit like a musician practising
their scales: here's how you launch into cloud, here's how you trim with no
horizon, here's how you fly a crosswind circuit, here's how you anticipate
foreshortened diagonal and base legs, and here's how you realise that you MUST
keep the speed on all the way down the final approach – oh and complete a fully
held off landing as the crosswind performs a dating service between your glider
and the downwind boundary...
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| What we DID get on Sunday; grey, grey, grey. |
With CFI Don Puttock on hand to provide some (unexpected) advanced
instruction for IFP candidate Rich Roberts, and Adrian Irwin, Karl Andrews and
Roger ('There's a Wave Bar Out There Somewhere...) Appleboom available to keep
the solo gliders cycling through, we started apace until...most unexpectedly
(ie. as Adrian rotated the Zugvögel into the climb) the winch began sucking on
air instead of diesel! Fortunately Adrian, who is not one of those pole-benders
you see occasionally, was able to guide the Zugvögel back to earth without
drama. The subsequent post-mortem revealed an incompatibility between metals
used in the fuel supply line – a fault which we are deeply grateful to Dave
Bourchier and Barry Green for identifying and, eventually, rectifying
sufficiently to allow us to continue.
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| The reason why we didn’t get soaring weather on Sunday. |
And so Dave Downton, Ed Borlase and Dave Westcott were able to resume
practising their aforementioned 'musician's scales' whilst, just before dusk the
cloudbase did, finally, lift.
With thanks as ever to Barry Green for winching, to Heather Horswill for
providing the retrieve service, mention should also be made of Ed Borlase's
friend Adam who, as a drone hobbyist, obtained some very interesting videos of
gliders launching that we hope he will be able to expand upon in future...
Martin Cropper
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