Tuesday 8th April - Portmoak

"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. 
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).
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