Today had a good forecast (4 stars on RASP) but for a while it looked
like flying would have to be cancelled. The annual expedition to Aston
Down meant that a lot of members were away and no instructors were available (Ed: NRI apparently means No Rated Instructor. Funny, I thought the R stood for something else).
Jamie Steel stepped in at short notice to open the airfield - Thank You
Jamie.
As it was, we opened the airfield with only four members,
probably the minimum possible. With one doing winch and retrieve,
another in the tower, and another launching. So we could only fly one person
at a time. When a fifth member appeared mid morning it meant that we could do some
training or launch a second aircraft when both were solo.
Steve Fletcher brought some friends up to see the action and show off his club. They witnessed Alasdair's first check flight with Jamie (12 minutes). After his second flight he was cleared to fly the K-8, GDK which he did in the afternoon, clocking up a total of 20 minutes across two flights.
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| Alasdair lands K-13, FGR with Jamie monitoring from the rear seat (Ed: I detect a Scottish vibe going on here) |
Colin
was there bright and early working on the Puchacz, which had been
previously derigged by the Wednesday Wavers. He was later joined by Adam and both
worked right through day without taking any flights (Ed: Many thanks both for your sterling efforts). As both the Puchacz and
Astir are off-line at the moment, a K-13 and K-8 were taken up to the
airfield. The wind was out of the south east, so we were launching from
the west end, meaning we were saved from the long trek with the gliders to
the east end.
The day initially looked very promising but as we
were setting up the blue sky was disappearing to the north and top cover
(Ed: High cloud that blocks out the sun) started filling in from the south. This meant any thermals were few and
far between. Most of the flights were extended circuits, although later
in the day there was some indication of weak wave, allowing for some further extended flights in zero sink. The "Flight of the Day" was a very commendable
47 minutes by "liftmeister" Malcolm in the K-8, who engaged his personal
anti-gravity system by finding some lift coming off Brentor church.
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| The last of the blue sky disappeared to the north |
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| Are those wave bars to the west set up by the south easterly wind? |
We
were joined in the afternoon by Matthew "Harry" Connick, who used his
reciprocal membership as a member of Portsmouth Naval Gliding Club (based at Middle Wallop). He
has some previous gliding experience and went up for a couple of flights
with Jamie. It's good to see the club's strong ties with the Royal Navy continue to flourish.
With rain scheduled to come in just after 1600 we
packed up early, and managed to get the last glider into the hangar just
as the first drops were falling. Despite the rain the hangar apron had to be swept as recent thunderstorms had washed a large number of stones onto
it, making the gliders hard to move on their belly dollies.
Despite the low numbers and challenging conditions, it was still a useful day's flying with solo flights by Hugh Gascoyne (19 minutes), Malcolm Wilton-Jones (47 minutes), David Archer (5 minutes), Alasdair Barclay (11 minutes), and of course Jamie Steel (11 minutes) (Ed: Got to keep those Flight Instructor P1 flight hours up). A total of 12 flights were made on what is likely to be the best flying day of the Bank Holiday Weekend.
Alastair Barclay (Fist time blogger with Gavin Short as sub-editor)
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