"What a difference a day makes"
That people were waiting from
7:20am for the Clubhouse caterers to arrive and to be able to order
breakfast tells you that there was much optimism for a good day's flying
- those not in the food ordering queue at the Clubhouse were busy
getting gliders checked and towed across to the launch point before
taking their turn to order breakfast.
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| First DG505 launch of the day at 09:45am |
The grid soon became packed with many SGU gliders and privately owned gliders, both SGU and visitors.
The
high levels of optimism were rewarded from the first flight of the day
at 9, and through continuing regular launches, on into the afternoon and
in turn the early evening.
A steady stream of gliders were
launched by the winch throughout the day heading straight over to the
West ridge where the fresh Westerly wind was providing expected strong
lines of lift at various parts of the ridge - as the day progressed
thermals provided the opportunity for those gliders who wished to leave
the ridge to do so albeit that as often is the case the 'sky over there
was not necessarily better than the sky over here'.
As the grid
became emptier no surprise that the ridge rapidly became like Piccadilly Circus, Spaghetti Junction and Heathrow all rolled in to one -
lookout was, as ever, key.
After much fun making use of the good
lift on the West ridge as well as the various thermals and limited weak
wave by mid afternoon most of the North Hill gliders had landed to allow
pilot refreshments and changeovers.
After a brief pause for late
lunches and hot drinks, with renewed energy the late afternoon/early
evening grid re-filled with North Hill gliders which were soon
launching on to the still working West ridge and in anticipation of wave
setting up early evening as with Sunday. On this particular occasion it
was not to be although there was again plenty of good flying to be had
during the early evening (A particular thank you to Paul who, having
been cleared to use the SGU winch, kindly launched everyone else on the
late afternoon/early evening grid without then flying himself).
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| There was some wave - but a little far downwind |
By
the end of the day the North Hill expeditionees had completed circa 30
flights and over 50 hours flying time - and everyone in the North Hill
contingent had flown during the day .
As always the last word goes to Mark C - "Make sure the Blog captures the epicness of today"....
Enough said perhaps. - Mike Sl
