A crisp sunny blue sky awaited the members arriving at North Hill today - and although the North Easterly wind was quite fresh it was not that cold, although it was evident that more layers were going to be needed than in recent weeks.
With Simon Minson as Duty Instructor, supported by Guy Adams, John Sillett and Mike Sloggett, both K21s, the DG505 and a Junior were soon having their daily inspections completed whilst the winch was set up in the North East corner of the airfield to allow a traditional launch run from the South West corner.
No surprise that ‘Blue’ was the colour of the card rating set by Simon for the start of flying -and with Simon looking after the general list whilst Guy and John progressed the booked instructional flying.
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| Simon Minson pleased to be back in the rear seat with Ruth Comer (Simon Minson) |
Although the wind strength looked “interesting”, from the first few flights pilots reported a fairly straightforward launch. circuit and landing albeit a need, as ever with the West end of the airfield, to not go too far back for the approach...
The morning’s flying saw good progression with the flying list and with many of the Instructors and members having been on the airfield from early on a decision was made to have a quick lunch break - during which, in view of the wind strength, the Junior was returned to the hangar.
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| Great blue sky (Mike Sloggett) |
After lunch the flying list continued to progress whilst John and Jack Raybould were able to complete Jack’s long awaited College Project using the DG505 for various flights on the winch and aerotow.
Late afternoon with the flying list nearing completion gliders were starting to be flown down to the other end of the airfield - 33 flights in total.
Best flight of the day was by Guy and Jonathan Erskine who managed to find the elusive wave to the North East of the airfield.
As ever thank you to those members who were on the airfield from start to finish today in some cases giving up some of their potential flights to ensure that others got into the air at least once. - Mike Sloggett
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| Geoff Lawrence launching at North Hill (Condor) |
In the evening, the Condor Racers took on a new challenge, as Stewart Henshall had generated a pretty accurate local airspace scheme, and had set up a cats cradle of local turnpoints to explore without the benefit of a PDA. This required a bit of homework for the detail of the turnpoints, avoiding the penalties of the airspace and some real navigation for a change, alongside the old concept of taking photographs (screenshots) of turnpoints. Boy racer Dan Hender won the day, but to be fair Stewart hung around at the back to help coach others where needed.
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| Stewart, Chris Warnes and Geoff Lawrence sharing a thermal (Stewart Henshall) |
The general feeling was that it brought a new dimension to the Condor forum which was more challenging and enjoyable. Thanks to Matt Howard for hosting the task, and although his own Condor race failed, he completed the task in a Lancaster!
The DSGC Condor racing group is steadily growing in popularity, regular tasks on Sunday evenings and other adhoc callouts on What's App (Dan, Stewart and David Clements explored the mountains of Northern Italy and Slovenia on Friday afternoon in a lead and follow) - Come and join us, you can watch a stream on Discord or Spectate on Condor - J&P
