Wednesday 22nd to Thursday 23rd June

Posted: 23/06/2016 21:35

Wednesday 22nd.    Wednesday turned out to be a mainly cloudy day, but with occasional sunny intervals, the conditions making for a flying day but not particularly a soaring one, the wind being a light to moderate S'ly.  29 ATs were flown off runway 20, with the holiday course members  continuing to add to their flight totals and flight times, the latter not as avidly as on the previous days.  Flying continued from around 1000 hrs to just before 1700 hrs with only one of the day's flights exceeding an hour and a further 6 exceeding 30 minutes.   A soarable window around 1400 hrs saw Phil Lazenby have 48 minutes in the DG303 while, taking off shortly afterwards, the two Davids, Watson and McKinney had 1:27 in K21 KLW.    George Goodenough rigged his Cirrus and had 49 minutes in it, John Carter and Chris Haresnape had 34 minutes in KLW while there were 2 flights in the Falke.  The day abounded with visitors, 4 First Flight pupils during the day and a 12 strong group of WI ladies in the evening, all of whom had flights with one the following,  Brian Wise in K21 JVZ, Steve Thompson in the DG500 or David Watson in K21 KLW.  Flight times varied from 15 to 29  minutes in the evening calm the evening being rounded off with a splendid supper prepared by Liz.

Thursday 23rd.  The wind had backed into the SE but remained light to moderate, so operations were again off runway 20, the first flight taking off just after 1000 hrs.  Flying continued until around 1815 hrs when Bob Beck and Luke Koprowski brought K21 KLW to a rest at the hangar end of runway 06, the wind having backed into the ENE    28 ATs were flown, 5 for First Flight pupils, while in addition, there were 5 flights in the Falke.  A medium level overcast was present until the early afternoon, this fading away and allowing some Cu development that gave some patchy and often unreliable soaring conditions, the cloud base being initially around  2,500 asl.  In the better soaring areas later in the day , cloud base rose to just under 4,000' asl, but as the afternoon drew on high cover spread in from the south.  2 private owners rigged, Rob Bailey taking his ASG29 for an, at times, low level recce of the eastern side of the Dales, while George Rowden, abandoning his declared task due to gloomy conditions on track, followed the best of the weather in his LS8-18, visiting the Tontine, Carlton, Northallerton and Thirsk.  Rob and George were two of the pilots to exceed an hour in the air, they being joined by Ron Beezer and Christina Griffiths who  had 1:12 in the DG1000.  John Carter and Geoff Turner, with 50 minutes in K21 JVZ, were one of the 8 flights to exceed 30 minutes, Kevin and Liz Keily with 47 minutes in the DG500 and Andy Parish and Andy Tyas in the DG1000 with 45 minutes being among this particular grouping.  Among the club solo flights of the day, P Challans had 40 minutes in K21 JVZ.  The club also welcomed back Liam Watt who visited at the controls of G-USSY, a Piper PA38, with the news that he would soon be moving to Cobham and able to spend more time at the YGC renewing his acquaintance with gliding.

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.

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