Whilst up north the wind howled, glorious Devon was warmish, cloudy with a bracing west northwesterly, initially cloudbase was up to nearly 2000ft but a drizzly feature came through at lunchtime bringing cloudbase down to 1400ft.
All the Thursday mob soared, a total of 12.5 hours from 16 launches, but early on, Pete St in Discus 230 reported the bracing wind was actually 40kts at 1500ft. Most flights were climbing along the ridge and then pushing out into wind but fairly stationary in front of the ridge. Matt ASW24 M5 and Pete nearly managed to get to Cullompton, and it was quite a struggle in the K13 and Junior to make any headway. It was quite easy to demonstrate an undershoot from 1000ft over the airfield boundary.
A rare sight CFI Pete in a Junior |
Invigorating flying with only a minor hiccup with a rope/weak link break on the last launch, - but whilst the team were recovering the cable from down the hill, they found another couple of strops!