Wednesday 26th to Friday 28th April 2017
Posted: 29/04/2017 16:29
Wednesday 26th. The N'ly wind had declined to moderate, but still with gusts into the high 20 kts, accompanied by a reducing number of showers, although these added up to 5.2 mm of rain over the day. Although conditions slowly improved with time there was no flying.
Thursday 27th. Thursday was a predominately cloudy day, with only limited sunny intervals and still with occasional showers in the moderate NNW'ly wind, this slowly backing into the W over the course of the day. Andy Parish and Chris Gill took the only glider flight of the day mid-afternoon, their sortie in K21 JVZ lasting 17 minutes although the day's flight total was doubled due to the Falke having a flight.
Friday 28th. Winds from a N'ly sector continued but had dropped in strength to become light and the day provided periods of soaring interspersed with periods of spreadout. 21 ATs were flown off runway 02, including 4 by private owners who were either encouraged by the conditions or were desperate to fly. None of them featured in the longest flights of the day, however, as Colin Troise in the Discus, Mike Greenacre in Astir DPO, Dick Cole in the Discus and Reg Rowlinson flying K21 JVZ solo were the four >1 hr pilots on the day. Dick spent his flight visiting Tontine, Easingwold, Helmsley and Dalton while a couple of the private owners explored the western face of the North Yorkshire Moors as far as Osmotherly, but given their inability to remain in the air for > 1 hour, we can only conclude conditions were better nearer Sutton. 4 First Flight pupils were flown, with one of them, Scarlet Worrals, liking the experience so much that she had a second flight and subsequent to that joined the club as a Junior member. Her 40 minute flight with Chris Gill in JVZ was equalled in time by Andy Parish and Alan Beamish in the same glider and by Tony Drury in his DG303, theirs being 3 of the 9 flights that exceeded 30 minutes, while the Falke had a single sortie.
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.