After John Allan made his first 300km flight from Brentor on 5 June I invited him to tell us how he did it. This is his tale.
Gavin Short
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300km
Gold Distance flight
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This year started badly for gliding, the weather from January all the
way through to the end of April was pretty poor, including several weeks of
no flying at all, in February, due to the state of the airfield.
At last the weather started to improve, and I had started to get some
good soaring flights to push out beyond gliding range of the airfield -
the 5NM limits having been wiped away when I passed my Bronze Cross
Country Navigation and Field Landing assessment in
the Autumn of last year. I was getting used to my Mini Nimbus (KPV)
again, and really starting to feel at home in it after the long winter.
The opportunity of good weather saw me complete a Silver distance (50km), which completed my BGA Silver Badge.
The next week we had a club trip to Aston Down, and with a keen eye on
the forecasts for cross-country flights, I took the opportunity to start
pushing further, with cross-country flights most of that week,
including flying the Aston Down Club 100km task with
enough time to make two extra legs taking it to over 200km. The point
of all of this, is that it starts to build up experience and knowledge
of the sky, your glider, how the instruments work for navigation, and
how your own mind and body cope with long, 5 hour
plus flights. Diet and hydration and comfort matter. I don't think
it's safe to fly for longer than around 2-3hrs for
without being able to drink at least 2 or more litres
of water and have the means of easily getting rid of it!!! I think to
start flying further you need to really know it's all going to work as
planned, so that you can focus on lookout, the task and what's happening
to the weather and the surrounding sky. Time
in the air, improves thermaling skills, and brings knowledge and
confidence to know when a cloud looks good and roughly what to expect in
terms of a climb, and how to quickly make use of a thermal when you
find it.
A week after I got back from Aston Down, RASP was showing signs of an
excellent Wednesday at Dartmoor Gliding, and the WhatsApp group was full
of enthusiastic chatter. From the Monday onwards, I kept an eagle eye
on the various gliding forecasts. RASP continued
to show a 4-5 star prediction across most of Devon. I felt that as I'd
done a 216km flight in a 5 hour 16 minute flight at 46km/h, in theoretically
poorer conditions with time wasted flying about aimlessly for some of
it, that if I really pushed then 300km would be
achievable in the 5-6 hour thermic window, that was forecast.
For a 300km task, you have to declare what you are going to do. I'd been
working out various ways of getting a 300km flight. An out and return
flight seemed less likely to be achievable as RASP showed that the good
soaring area would create a gap from Exeter
up the M5 in the late afternoon, and that would possibly mean a landing
at North Hill - perfectly safe, but with logistics to sort out the
retrieve, or a proper land out a long way from Brentor.
I played with various options alongside the RASP charts during the week (SkyDemon Lite is great for quickly working out task distances), and
then a few messages back and forth with Richard Roberts. The night
before, I settled on a three turn point, "cats cradle"
task of Brentor (BRT), Chard (CHA), Roadford (ROA), Dulverton (DUL),
Brentor (BRT), giving 309km. I thought I'd get the bit past Exeter out
of the way first, then I could always bail if I didn't fancy going back
up to Exmoor later, but conditions over North
Devon were forecast to remain good late into the afternoon, so it all
seemed to work - in theory!!!
Wednesday came, and the forecast still looked good. I made my
declaration on paper to Gavin, our Official Observer, as I don't seem to
be able to electronically declare a task to my IGC Flarm, and I also
wanted to use the BGA dongle logger as a backup, so
the paper method seemed very easy and safer. At the briefing in the
morning, I was put on the spot by duty instructor Mike Jardine, who
asked what task I had set, so no backing out now!!!
Several gliders had launched from 1100hrs but weren't managing to stay up yet, it was fairly blue around the airfield, not exactly as forecast. At
1200hrs, I felt there was a reasonable chance of getting away, and I
needed the time to complete the task before the thermal window closes. A
small wisp of a cloud was building and passing over the winch, it
looked as if it had turbulent air moving up into
it. I took the winch launch to 1,200ft, into the 10Kt North Westerly wind, turned
and went straight back to my thermal which was now halfway down the airfield,
tricky at first but once I reached a decent height of around 2,500ft, I
could push out further to much better lift and
climbed to cloud base near Tavistock. I started my task at around
4,000ft AGL, with plenty of height to reach some better looking sky towards
Okehampton.
Annoyingly, I could hear that one of the undercarriage doors hadn't
closed properly, and was a little like having the back windows of a car
open, when you get a kind of thrumming noise. I put the wheel down,
less noise, wheel up, more noise, normally it's much
quieter. I briefly thought to land and sort it, but the day would have
been wasted, and if it started to bother me, I could fly with the wheel
down anyway, so I just lived with it and soon forgot about it.
The day was building and conditions improved rapidly, and I was able to
make good progress round the active Willsworthy danger area, to
Okehampton Camp and turned east towards Exeter. The altimeter subscale now
set to QNH, now I'm out of gliding range of Brentor.
Progress was good, and I had been warned that there would be lots of
other glider traffic about, and there was. I've not seen it so busy in
the South West before, more like being at Aston Down in that respect. I
was able to keep moving on fairly fast between
good thermals. I then passed Exeter airport, keeping clear to the north. Soon I
was looking down on North Hill and Dunkeswell a few miles to the north,
then I passed Honiton and saw Chard ahead. I enjoyed great views down the south
coast to Weymouth, and to the North coast as
well.
 |
| Passing North Hill airfield (middle) with Dunkeswell airfield, far right |
I joined another glider in a thermal at Chard, and then a third joined
us as we climbed, each leaving quickly as we got up towards cloud base.
I later worked out one of them was doing a 750km task out of Lasham
including a leg down to Liskeard - no wonder they
were gone and off into the distance as soon as they left the thermal!! Now for the longest leg into wind all the way to Roadford. North of
Exeter airport was a little blue, but making a detour along cloud
streets lined up from North Hill towards Exmoor seemed a long way out of
the way, so I pushed on just north of Exeter, thankfully
finding better thermals when I did get to the clouds, due to the
sunshine on the ground. Along the northern edge of Dartmoor things went
very well, and I sped along under cloud streets, and was at Roadford in
no time, often with other gliders nearby again.
 |
|
Change of cloud base height, North of Exeter Airport. It seemed like
may be a convergence, but wasn't, and there wasn't really any lift up
the side of the clouds, as you expect from a sea breeze front. |
Now to Dulverton. With some knowledge of the Macready speed to fly theory, I knew I
needed to add a few knots above my best glide of 51Kt, for the good
thermals, so 60Kts between thermals. Dulverton appeared ahead. However,
things were looking rather more blue than
it had been, now at around 1630hrs as
I turned Dulverton, I was looking at a rather large area of blue sky
with only a few small
clouds. Thermals were there, but really rough and broken, and I started
to think I may end up landing out.
But after I got the measure of this
change, in the way they worked, I managed a decent climb to near cloud
base, enough to just push on for the better
sky towards Okehampton, I'd been blown a bit to the east and looking
down at Crediton to my left wasn't really what I needed, but a few
thermals later I was in great thermals along the North of Dartmoor and a
few miles east of Okehampton. As I climbed, my navigation computer pinged to say I was above final glide. I had more good
climbs ahead, but I climbed to cloud base anyway - let's not mess this up
now!!! Past Okehampton Camp, turning south towards Meldon, making very
sure I was staying clear of the active danger area
again. I set the altimeter back to QFE.
 |
Home run from Okehampton looking down on Meldon Reservoir. Now being
careful to stay outside the Firing Range beyond Meldon which was active.
|
I took a totally unnecessary climb over Lydford, but I really
enjoyed myself in a lovely thermal. I flew through the finish line at
Brentor at about 2,500ft, looking about for what was launching and what
was happening, pre circuit checks, radio call, circuit
and landed.
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John's Mini-Nimbus "peanut", (KPV), joins the rest of the gliders ready for derigging at the end of a great day
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309km, total flight 5 hours 14 minutes. As I type I'm hoping this will qualify for a
300km Gold distance flight, plus both legs of the 100km diploma as my
handicapped speed was 65.8Km/h which will hopefully scrape in the
65Km/h requirement, but this is all subject to verification
by the BGA. It's also my furthest ever flight so far, and fastest
task.
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John's 309km flight showing the start, finish and turning points
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Now I just can't wait for the next one!!
John Allan
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