Thursday 17th September 2026.
Posted: 17/09/2026 23:20
Thursday 17th. A cold front brought rain in the early morning, but its passage left the site in a moderate/moderate to fresh WSW/W'ly wind and a day of sunny intervals and some scattered showers. With hill, thermal and perhaps wave in prospect, 1 self and 10 winch launches off runway 24 were the order of the day, resulting in 9 flights of over 30 minutes, with 5 of these over an hour. The 5 private owners who launched had all ther over an hour flights, with flight times from 4:45 by Clive Swain in his Kestrel 19, to the 2:20 flown by both Fred Brown in his Ventus 2ct and Tony Drury in his DG303. All the day's soaring pilots use a mixture of hill and thermal lift, with some finding some transient wave, the day's typical operating heights being 700'-3,100' QFE, with the day's peak altitude of 5,300' asl achieved via a cloud climb by Fred Brown that was followed by a visit around Osmotherley. The main W'ly and Forward ridges were flown, while Derek Taylor/Chris Teagle in Derek's Arcus M, flew to the NW of Northallerton, then overhead RAF Topcliffe followed by a visit to Tontine to cover 105 OLC km. Andreas Rieder/Andrew Bedford's 48 minutes in K21 JVZ was the day's longest flight in a club glider, while Andreas/Andy Tyas had a 1 minute, straight ahead landing flight from a low level release.
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.