A perfect forecast for today
promising a brisk N/W wind with excellent weather, what we got was an
almost Northerly gusty strong crosswind. Undeterred, Mike Fitz &
John St took the first blustery launch and set sail for the West ridge
wich was just about working with odd bit of weak thermal thrown in for
good measure, the other K21 and a Junior soon followed - it was not too
difficult to stay up and as the day progressed it got much better.
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| Cloud streets in abundance (John St) |
As
the first three gliders stayed up you could see a flurry of gliders being
rigged to join in the fun, the first K21 launched stayed up for 57min
after airbreaking it down.
The second Junior was rigged and back on line after the protracted wait for some spares. Thanks to all for helping.
The second Junior was rigged and back on line after the protracted wait for some spares. Thanks to all for helping.
Eric
flew the two Trial lesson flights before rigging his own glider and Pete W flew
the tug, all the flights in the morning were soaring flights and some
pilots found their thermalling a little rusty but soon got into the
swing of it.
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| Eric ready to fly G29 (John St) |
FLARM has now been fitted to most of the Club fleet and following the excellent briefing presentations from Pete, members are starting to get used to flying with it (no substitute for lookout).
Martin W found wave the other side of the motorway and invited everyone to join him but most were at lunch! He climbed to the base of the airway then headed west and reached 6700ft and also took the prize for longest flight of the day at 4 hours.
Towards the end of the afternoon, a Hercules flew through our circuit at 300ft - CFI Pete is investigating.
The
wind slackened in the afternoon and the soaring continued all afternoon, Eric, Martin, Ron, Tim J, and Tom flew their own gliders,
today was a nice start to spring. We managed 28hrs soaring with 36 flights. - JSt
