Wednesday 17th June 2026
Posted: 18/06/2026 13:16
Wednesday 17th. A moderate to moderate to fresh WSW'ly blew all day, so operations were off runway 24, with 22 ATs and 1 self launch leading to 17 flights of over 30 minutes of which 11 were over an hour, as a good wave day led to 9 climbs to over 5,000' asl, 6 to over 10,000' asl and 2 to over 15,000' asl. The . 15,000' plus asl pilots were Martyn Johnson in his DG600 with a climb to 16,700' asl to the SW of Masham and Fred Brown in his Ventus 2ct with a climb to 16,300' asl in the same area. Both pilots contacted the wave close to site, Martyn straight off tow and Fred after some initial thermalling, and they both flew to the Masham/Ripon area with Martyn covering 106 OLC km and Fred 127 OLC km, the result of a visit to the Catterick area. Two flights covered around 300 OLC km, with Dean Crosby in his LS10t climbing to 12,300' asl while visiting areas near Ripon, Masham, Selset Reservoir, TP Rundale Tarn 20 km to the NNW of Selset and Garforth, 292 km, , while David Latimer/Derek Taylor in their Arcus M flew 305 km with visits to or near, Ripon, Barnard Castle, Wetherby S, Richmond and Ripon, reaching 11, 000' asl en route. The other > 10,000' asl flights were from the last two launches of the day, Dave Mckinney/Victoria Liu in K21 JVZ reaching 10,200' asl and Clive Swain/Leo Yeung in K21 KLW climbing to 10,600 asl, both climbs just to the W of Sutton and both flights lasting just over an hour. The pilots climbing to between 5,000' and 10,000' asl included Dave McKinney in his ASW 28, who in his 2:12 flight reached 8,300' asl, Steve Ogden in his Discus who, after 2 hours of thermal soaring eventually contacted the wave to the SW of site and climbed to 7,700' asl, and finally Andreas Rieder/Stephen Morgan in K21 JVZ who reached 5,600' asl during their 43 minute flight. A busy day at Sutton also included 6 launches for First Flight pupils.
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