After a day of much needed rain yesterday, Thursday had a rather mixed forecast with strong conditions but likelihood of heavy showers developing. First thing there was beautiful North Hill sunshine, but then that other local phenomena North Hill orographic cloud made it presence. So the opportunity to do some scattering of grass seed on the newly flattened areas was taken.
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| Thanks to Tim Petty, Ray Dodd and Aston Key for scattering grass seed (Jill Harmer) |
Having carefully selected the launch run for the westerly wind (to avoid the parachute landing on the seeded areas), flying got started.
The winch launch was going all day and in between, there were quite a few aerotow checks required and two Trial Lessons which kept Mark Courtney (Tug Pilot) busy.
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| Aerotow into a cumulus sky (Mike Sloggett) |
Ron & Chris 711 headed off for Okehampton, but weren't particularly impressed by the conditions with spreadout and low cloud bases.
Pete Startup 230 gave up after 2 winches launches into a blue sky and took an aerotow and then (was unusually not attempting a Club 100) was lucky to stumble upon a sea breeze convergence from Wellington to Dulverton getting to 4700ft QFE.
Congratulations to Peter March who resoloed today after 6 years with just the occasional 2-seater flight.
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| Congrats to Peter March solo again (John Alcroft) |
Thermals were generally 2 knots with 4 knot cores, to 3,800ft locally, but during the late afternoon another convergence set up between Honiton and Wellington, and Pete Harmer and Malcolm Vest in K13 played with this for a while. Peter Smith and James Sydney in K21 also enjoyed a long flight. Nigel Everett FAJ ventured away from North Hill for the first time flew Crediton- Chard.
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| Convergence Honiton to Wellington (Malcolm Vest) |
On the point of packing up, there were 2 last launches with James Smart in K21 on his 3rd solo of the day soaring for an hour and Ray Dodd in Junior also soaring overhead for more than an hour.
There were 49 winch launches and 11 aerotows and no rain at North Hill -although it did get close. - J&P
