Saturday 25th April 2026
Posted: 26/04/2026 17:12
Saturday 26th. The high pressure remained in place, but had shifted its position so that a moderate NNW'ly blew under sunny skies with some Cirrus making the sunshine hazy at times. 20 ATs and 4 Falke flights off runway 02, with an occasional landing on 06, constituting flying on the day, with some moderate thermal activity leading to 10 flights over 30 minutes of which 8 were over an hour. All the latter were by private owners, 3 being YGC members and 5 being visitors. Peak altitudes in the blue thermals were around 4,000' asl with the best peak average thermal strength of 3.5 kts, although Martin Newbery in his Ventus ct used his engine to climb to 4,900' asl before utilising thermal lift over the gulley in his 1:33 flight. The other pilots to have > an hour's flying all had between 1:08 and 1:27 and included Andrew Wilmott in his ASW20, Jamie Quartermaine in his ASW27 and visitors Colin Beer in his Shark 304S, Ian Russel in his ASW20, Martin Hardy in his Discus, Michael Worthington in his Libelle and Nigel Blatchford in his Discus, while visitor Richard Brookes had 54 minutes in his Std Libelle. The longest flight in a club glider was the 33 minutes flown by Les Rayment in K21 JVZ with one of the day's 4 First Flight pupils, the result of a 3k tow and some weak thermal lift over the gulley. The Falke's sorties, all flown by Paul Whitehead, included 2 separate visits to Breighton.
This blog describes a snippet of life at the Yorkshire Gliding Club. Why not take a flight and try it yourself, or we can teach you to fly as a full club member.