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| Preparing the gliders (Mike Sl) |
A good forecast meant that it was no surprise that a number of private gliders were soon being rigged albeit that the sky did not look as promising as the forecast perhaps suggested it might be.
However as the morning progressed, the sky steadily became more interesting so soon private gliders were starting to take launches into an improving sky.
During the day the flying list was steadily worked through with several trial lessons also completed including two 'mile high' flights.
Congratulations to Jess who converted to the K6......
....... and to Matthew who converted to the Lak.
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| Jess flies K6 (Graham H) |
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| Matthew flies Lak12 |
Most of the private gliders settled for local soaring as the 2300ft cloudbase, weak thermals and almost blue conditions weren't conducive to flying far, although John P in HOG turned Beaminster, and Pete St 230 and Phil in 611, went looking for the forecast convergence on the south coast which didn't make an appearance! Late in the afternoon, the clouds reappeared and bases rose to 3000ft.
By the end of the day when the hangar doors were closed at just after 18:30, the flying stats for the day reflected what a good day it had been with 52 launches completed-
(37 winch and 15 aerotow) for total flying time of just under 47 hours and with 9 flights over 2 hours
A particular thank you to the small number of members who completed long(er) stints on the winch than might normally be expected due to the limited available number of approved winch drivers and also to Peter St who stood in for Robert at short notice and completed 15 aerotows during the day. - Mike Sl
News from Mountain Soaring Competition, Aboyne
Today was the first proper comp day, a 205k task was set down towards
Portmoak. We started with a reasonable climb but had to stop climbing
because of a low min start height. We set off south having to go way off
course to get to the wave, even with 60:1 glide ratio we struggled to
get there arriving a thousand feet above the gnarly mountains, a bit of
flying around in some really rough rotor thermals allowed us to contact a
steady 1.5 knots to about 12,000'.
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| A bit close to the gnarly mountains (Liam) |
We pushed on and managed to climb up
to 15,000' at the TP which put us way over glide. Heading home we
contacted some ridiculous rotor and some off the clock climbs, but yet
there were still people on the ridges scratching in the weeds, which is
somewhere we didn't want to be (the field landing options are
non-existent). We came 11th overall for the day.- Liam
