We arrived at the airfield today to the news that yesterday Richard Roberts had flown in wave predicted by the Skysight Weather program ( originally developed for the Perlan2 project ). He launched in a strong easterly wind and flew to the east of the airfield which took him to about 3000 ft. Interestingly Skysight was predicting stronger wave to the north so Richard flew north and contacted much stronger wave which took him to 8000ft at which point he terminated the climb whist still going up at at 3 knots+. He landed back after 2 hrs 25 minutes. Great effort and an interesting use of a wave prediction tool.
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Richard;'s flight track overlaid on the Skysight prediction.
The red background colour indicates the strongest conditions |
And what of today? The gusty wind was strong from the SE. This unfortunately meant that we had to cancel today's visitor flying program. But members were still keen to fly.
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| HXP waiting to go. |
We took just K13 G-CHXP to the launchpoint. The first flight was flown by myself with Mike to check out the conditions before club flying would commence. There was weak wave to the east ( a little further out than usual ). We managed to climb to 2000ft before we terminated the climb to check out the circuit and approach conditions. These were acceptable for club members to fly although the approach needed some care. This flight lasted just 18 minutes but still turned out to be the longest of the day.
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| Looking back at airfield from 2000 ft |
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Me seemingly happy to be flying.
( note to self - put your hat on straight next time ) |
The club members all flew with Mike in HXP but even though the wave seemed to ellude them they all had practice at circuiting in the boisterous conditions.
By 3.30pm everyone had had their fill so it was decided to return to the clubhouse early to allow the Committee members to start their meeting which finished at 6pm and was followed by an Instructors meeting which continued well into the evening.
Steve
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