The second day of the course
week saw the launch point set up in the South East corner of the field
in anticipation of a forecast North Westerly wind.
With
a promising sky and a good forecast the course flying was underway soon
after 9:30 and then apart from a lunch break it was flying from start
to finish of the day with thermals providing good lift to a cloud base
of around 3000' but as ever with strong sink in between.
The
ridge was also working 'here and there' to allow gliders to 'hang
around' waiting for the thermals to arrive. Despite evident heavy
showers passing by to the North and the South of the airfield the day's
flying was not interrupted by any rain.
Alongside the
course flying, Tom and Pete St had some flying fun in their private
gliders, Ian took the opportunity to fly the Junior whilst both K21s
were airborne and Matt took the DG 505 to show his daughter Maddie various
local landmarks from the air.
Paul
C and David C took the Falke off for a flight to North Devon and back
using the engine for just 45 minutes of a 3 hour flight which reflects
how good the lift was in various parts of the sky.
By
the end of the day each course member had had a lot of flying and all
are making good progress with their individual goals for the week. - MS
Junior Nationals - Lasham
I
got around! But my logger failed... 175km was set and the forecast was
good. I struggled to the first turnpoint, getting low for a while but
after that I had a really good run into Blandford, aided by the seabreeze
front with some fantastic 7 knot climbs above the cloud to about 5200'
QFE. Then the first 20km back was a bit trickier with the seabreeze gone
and most of the climbs gone. I scratched around for a while, letting the wind
bring me closer to the turning point and climbed about 700ft back to
2000ft over the top of a field with 4 gliders in it. I managed to float to
a decent amount of sky and found a booming 7 knot climb back up to
3500ft which put me back on glide and managed to finish just before a
rain shower over Lasham.
Fantastic day out - but no trace, so no score but
oh well if my trace had worked I would have came in about 20th. - Liam
