Although the forecast suggested some 'interesting' weather around the
middle of the day it was still somewhat surprising that only a few
members turned out to make the most of the potential flying until such
weather might arrive.
After looking at the flying list it was decided that only the K21s and a Junior were needed so those gliders were taken out of the hangar for daily inspections to be completed whilst the launch point was set up in the North East corner of the field - once the windsock was in play it was evident that the fresh Southerly wind would make the approach lively.
With a reasonable looking sky Mark C and Konrad P took the first winch launch and as it happened then achieved the longest flight of the day at 43 minutes.
 |
| A promising start (Mike Sl) |
Mike
S and David C took the next winch launch hoping to also stay up but
their flight had barely started before it ended with a rope break and a
long walk back from down the field.
A few more extended circuit flights were then completed in the K21s and the Junior before imminent signs of the 'interesting' weather getting ever closer influenced the decision to put all the gliders away until the weather had passed across the airfield.
 |
| Interesting weather passing by (Mike Sl) |
With one of the ropes clearly showing signs
of more potential breaks and ahead of the Course Week starting on Monday
John St led a rope replacement team as the weather front got closer and
closer.
Just as the team were about to finish rain started to pour down so everyone stopped for lunch - as the rain ran steadily down the Clubhouse windows and saturated the field it was clear that the decision to stop flying had been the right one. The main downpour was 170 mm/hr rain rate with a total of 11 mm between 13:00 and 14:00.
After lunch and the grey skies had been replaced by bright blue ones with a more Westerly wind so the K21s were taken out of the hangar again - with Roly flying a Trial Lesson whilst the weather was playing fair.
Just as the team were about to finish rain started to pour down so everyone stopped for lunch - as the rain ran steadily down the Clubhouse windows and saturated the field it was clear that the decision to stop flying had been the right one. The main downpour was 170 mm/hr rain rate with a total of 11 mm between 13:00 and 14:00.
After lunch and the grey skies had been replaced by bright blue ones with a more Westerly wind so the K21s were taken out of the hangar again - with Roly flying a Trial Lesson whilst the weather was playing fair.
After a few more flights during the afternoon the next weather front could be seen approaching from the West and as the skies rapidly darkened again it was decided that the gliders would be safer in the hangar so all the kit was put away for the day.
 |
| More weather approaching (Mike Sl) |
A total of 12 flights for the day -
not the best of days, and certainly for early July, but all those who
wanted to fly had done so. - Mike Sl
News from Competition Enterprise 2015
Day 2 The early start was
scrapped with the front coming through in the morning which was being
followed by a trough which gave us a small window of around 3/4 hours in
the afternoon. People were setting off about 3 o'clock into a horrible
looking sky, I thought I might be able to scratch around and make some
distance but landed back, after some umming and ahhhing I decided to
have a relight as the sky had opened up a bit and there was this great
big black street running along course, I towed up into it and it ended
up hailing ridiculously heavy,
 |
| "Take me home please" (Liam) |
so I got the tug to tow me back over
Sutton Bank and landed safely, a few others got caught out locally in the
valleys and very few did up to 20/30k most just landing in a very
crowded airfield and calling it a day, Dave Masson didn't bother
launching, Trevor Stewart landed out after flying 20k away and making it
half way back. However Bob Bromwich managed about 70k and Gillian Wills
is currently following Justin with the trailer in tow towards Scotland
up to his normal cloud flying antics... Tomorrow looks like an actual
early start this time. - Liam
