Monday 27th February to Wednesday 1st March 2017

Posted: 03/03/2017 09:38

Monday 27th.  Monday proved to be a dull and damp day, with 12.2 mm of rain falling during daytime hours, the light to moderate S'ly slowly veering into the W as the day progressed, extensive low cloud adding to the reasons for a non flying day.

Tuesday 28th.  The non flying conditions of Monday had cleared away, the site experiencing a day of  initially sunny intervals and scattered showers, with a light to moderate SW'ly blowing and even a taste of some early thermal activity, although the skies clouded in later in the flying day.  12 ATs were flown, with one flight exceeding an hour and a further four 30 minutes.  Rob Bailey, flying the DG303 made use of the weak thermal activity, coupled with some weak and transient hill lift to fly 58 km, visiting Thirsk, the Tontine and Sutton Start W in his flight of 1:09, with Steve Ogden closing in on an hour's flight with 50 minutes flying K21 solo off the last flight of the day.   Albert Newbery and Chris Haresnape got even closer to the hour mark with 57 minutes in K21 KLW and Conrad Thwaites joined the > 30 minutes list with 40 minutes in the Discus.

Wednesday 1st March.  A light to moderate,  predominately SW'ly blew for most of the day, veering into the W later, most of the day's shower activity missing the site.  The wind speed precluded winching so, due to the wet state of the airfield, the Pawnee provided ATs off ruwnay 24 and 19 were flown, with all the 2 seaters utilised, plus the Discus.  John Carter, taking a high tow in DS2 for the purposes of getting air to air shots for a publicity activity related to a wine company, found some wave and climbed to 6,400' asl with his passenger Alistair Humphries, leaving 4 kts to return to site after a flight of 42 minutes.  Later, Mike Smith, flying with the only First Flight pupil of the day in the DG500, gained 500' in wave before increasing cloud forced a descent.  The cloud thickened and descended to around 1000' QFE around lunch time, causing a break in flying activities, but the skies then cleared and later flights found weak wave/enhanced hill lift that allowed soaring at around 1500' QFE.  This was enjoyed by Steve Thompson and Paul Bulmer in K21 JVZ, who, after doing an on tow descent for training purposes, eventually released at 2,000' QFE and later landed after a flight of 1:15.  They had been preceded by George Rowden who flew the Discus for exactly an hour, while earlier Rob Bailey had had 47 minutes in the same glider  as did Graham Taylor  with 2 flights of 23 and 37 minutes, the longer one being off the last flight of the day and contributing to the 4 flights to exceed 30 minutes.  The day's flying activities were rounded off by a single Falke flight.

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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