Well, it was a good flying day. Shreds of low cloud slowly dissipated
leaving the airfield free of showers, and with the general visibility
improving rapidly. The stiff westerly wind constantly veered and backed
by a few degrees, but during the morning was benign enough to allow one
very recent solo pilot, Paul K to consolidate - again being cleared for a
couple of solo flights. Another re-solo was Wendy. The pre-solo course
members had instructional flights of varying lengths. A break for lunch,
and a return to flying with expectations of weather conditions being
much the same. Alas, the wind strength had increased significantly,
which limited all flying to dual. There was plenty of lift, and although
it took perseverance to stay airborne our expert instructors, of
course, came up trumps. Several long soaring flights giving course
members plenty of opportunities to improve their flying
skills. Tomorrow's forecast looks like a return to theory in the
classroom, but with luck a clearance in the afternoon may allow us to
take to the air again. - WWF
News from Competition Enterprise
Day 4 The
task setters were very lazy and set the same task as yesterday. The
wind was a 20 knot WSW and there was prospects of all sorts of lift
after the rain.
I had planned several
different possibilities depending on what lift I could actually use, if
it was streeting just run up and down it, if a sea breeze convergence or
wave set up to the east, take off and head downwind to it, then run that
up and down and land out. The third option which ended up happening was
running up and down the ridge.
So after a really
interesting launch the streeting hadn't quite started, so I thought I
would run the 15ish km ridge north and back, I found some thermals which
meant I was never really lower than 2000 feet. On return to Sutton Bank, I
headed back off along the same route down the ridge, and got into a
strong climb to 3500 feet with a street running to the seaside across
the Moors and decided not to take it and wait to see what it did, so I
flew another 10km to the end of the ridge trusting that it would work.
 |
| Ridge running (Liam) |
It kinda did, for the
first 10 km it was very tense, rather low and very bitty with lots of long
glides just getting lower and lower, the original cloud street had
dissipated but after climbing a few hundred feet in some bowl I could
finally jump safely on to the ridge near the airfield and climb back to
circuit height, but I couldn't turn down the lift, - so I spent another
hour racing up and down having a whale of a time before eventually
landing.
Rest day tomorrow!! - Liam
