Little change in the weather forecast over the last few days but there was a subtle change. We still had the high pressure and easterly airflow with blue skies and a little cloud. Would there be wave again? The wind had eased a little but still quite strong at height. The RASP showed thermals and the forecast map showed wave at 850mb from Lydford to Mary Tavy and on to Burrator but which would win the day. An early weather check before briefing confirmed that the conditions were good for training and visitor flying so after the briefing the remaining gliders were taken to the east end launch point.
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| Mike Jardine and Steve Fletcher enjoying a weather check. |
Mike Jardine started the training program with Julia Old while Phil Hardwick and Robin Wilson set off on a search for lift and soon appeared to be climbing slowly for a while until suddenly losing height and returning. They reported finding some weak lift over Mary Tavy and had gained 3-400’ before running into strong sink. Was it thermal or rotor and wave, they were not sure and suggested I try it.
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| Looking north from above the airfield. |
Steve Fletcher started off the visitors with Karen Sullivan in the Puchacz and I helped with launching the club gliders until there were sufficient people to run the launch point.
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| Steve Fletcher presents Graham Fear with his trial flight certificate. |
I took my launch in the Twin Astir at 1125, released at 1,300’ and headed to Mary Tavy, flying through patches of lift which felt like rotor but the lift was gone after one turn so I continued into wind towards a fire with a plume of smoke, through more patches of lift until I smelt smoke as the audio vario peaked and turned into good lift. Initially I was only getting to a little over 2,000’ above site and I searched along the A386 a few miles both north and south of Mary Tavy and found plentiful lift up to 6-8 knts but dying quickly at a little over 3,000’ at the inversion I then searched downwind and fund another line of good thermals about 4 miles west of Mary Tavy where I was under the edge of a high level cloud. I wondered if the thermals were being influenced by the wave above the inversion but I did not find any thermals breaking through the inversion. Having promised to take over on the winch I returned to land after 1 hour 40 minutes for lunch then spent most of the afternoon on the winch.
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| This wis the IGC file for my flight above. |
At one point I noted that for a while a Ka-13 was following me wherever I went and was keeping up with me for some time, it turned out it was one of our junior members Jamie Young flying solo, all credit to him for staying up for 31 minutes on a day when few people stayed up very long, he deserves flight of the day for that.
John Allen spent 2h 52 minutes in his Mini nimbus
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| Steve Fletcher presents Philippe Finney with his trial flight certificate. |
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| Steve Fletcher presents Andy Bird with his trial flight certificate. |
New members Graham and Anna Johnson had 2 flights each with Make Jardine; Viktor Shochko brought his son Misha for a flight with Steve Lewis, who otherwise spent some time sorting out some minor problems with the Astir, repaired the nose hook and found an old wheel dolly to replace the other one which was damaging the undercarriage.
Malcolm W-J
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