With no emails predicting good soaring conditions and the rasp forecast predicting winds of 15 to 20 knots with gusts of 25 knots, would we even be ably to fly today. On arrival at the club some early activity with the ground kit showed some optimism that flying may be possible. The wind was certainly less than forecast and with 8/8ths cloud cover everything looked good for some circuits only. With only one trainee we took a K13 to the launch point to fly. With the windsock starting to dance around a bit, I decided to take a weather check flight. Straight off the top of the launch I was straight into weak wave. After climbing to 2000ft I decided to land for others to fly as it can never be guaranteed how long the wave would last.
 |
| Distant wave bars. |
Although I was happy for solo pilots to fly, both Adam Hoskin and Ed Borlase chose to have a flight with me to see what the conditions were like. Both had flights of 24 minutes and 25 minutes respectively.
 |
| Adam climbing well on his flight. |
Meanwhile Andy Davey and Martin Broadway had rigged their Libelle. Andy took the first launch and disappeared for 45 minutes before returning to let Martin take a launch. Martin unfortunately didn't manage to get away and decided to wait until later. Richard Roberts appeared with his Discus and promptly disappeared for 1 hour 43 minutes.
The only trainee at the club today was Freddie Colton. Two circuits with high approaches and full airbrakes left Freddie astounded by the steepness of the approach and what a different picture was in front of him compared to a normal approach. Two flights later with more normal approaches included a 27 minute wave flight. All four approaches were flown by Freddie and will hold him in good stead for the future.
After Andy's earlier flight, it was the turn of Martin Broadway to fly the Libelle again. This time he managed to contact the lift. Also Adam Hoskin had also decided to fly the K6 Woody. Both were seen flying at just over 2000ft on a roughly north south beat.
 |
| Martin ready to fly the Libelle. |
Shortly after it could be seen that both Martin and Adam had moved and were now climbing higher. I launched again with Ed Borlase. Straight off the top of the launch we managed to stay clear of cloud and were soon climbing well up the side of the cloud.
 |
| Climbing up past the clouds. |
 |
| Our view at 4000ft |
 |
Adam high above us.
|
Ed and I topped out at just over 4000ft. We were thinking the clouds may be closing in so we opened the airbrakes and descended under the cloud to land after 33 minutes. Adam had already landed after a flight of 2 hours 8 minutes. Shortly after us Martin landed to claim flight of the day with 2 hours 11 minutes. He also reported that he managed to top out at 5800ft.
A day that started with us thinking we may not fly and ended with 13 flights and an average time per flight of 43 minutes per flight. All that flew had a wave flight. Thank you to all at the club today especially Phil Hardwick who winched and didn't fly after finding a problem with his DG300.
No comments:
Post a Comment