Light south / south westerly and signs of high cover did not bode well for decent soaring conditions but by 11am Cu were forming and by 12.30 the sky was looking quite good.
It turned into a brilliant day, all students had an hour or more soaring, Mike resoloed the Junior and Pete flew DG1 for over two hours. It was good to see Chris and Stewart back, getting a good flight in the K21 and DG505 respectively.
711, SM and KJW went off on the day's task of a 157kms out and return to Shaftsbury in fairly good conditions.
JB reported that "at times it was very good with cloudbase about 4500 QNH and 4 to 5kts on the averager – we used an area of convergence as we passed Yeovilton where the cloud base dropped down to about 3800 QNH for a while. There was a big cloud just north of Henstridge which gave us a top up before 5 km dash out Shaftsbury in a pretty empty sky. We turned Shaftsbury and went for a scrappy bit just north of the town and then it got a bit slow – I found 2 kts and lost it and we struggled a bit while we worked our way west again to try and pick up the bigger cloud NE of Henstridge. We needed to get higher to ensure that we connected to the lift once we got under the cloud but at the same time didn’t want to waste time in this scrappy lift. SM got to the cloud first and marked the strongest lift of the day which quickly whipped us back to cloud base. West of Yeovil the sea air looked like it was going to make life difficult around Chard so we stayed well north to avoid it, this slowed us down a bit as we needed to get another climb south of Taunton to make it home safely."
Dave Reilly in AM set a task O/R to Popham -302Km,
"Sunday started with mist in the valley and still in the Bristol channel
at T/O 1140 local. I grovelled about west of WEG till about 40 minutes,
then headed E reaching YEO at 1155. Wind 160/7.Then continued E over
Compton Abbas to SAS at 1235.
I then headed NE towards MEM but ahead looked very gloomy so continued
via Boscombe, Andover, and BUL. Got a bit low there but climbed up and
POP looked close so turned at 1323.
LAS also looked gloom smitten so set off back for NHL.
Big climb 20 mins later to 6320' at true 5 kt average. The Park passed
at 1410 And as usual it got a bit slower to TAU at 1448.
Finished NHL at 1508 after taking an extra 1500 feet near the Monument.
Even so the return was at nearly 90 kph."
