Saturday July 15th – Monday July 17th 2017
Posted: 18/07/2017 17:15
Saturday: Not a day to go gliding although Andy Parish and passenger did get off the ground briefly mid afternoon for a 20 min sortie in the Falke.
Sunday 16th:
Another W wind day and yet more wave.Those who entered flights on the ladder were Jim McLean in the ASW24 with 175km, John Ellis 220km and Martyn Johnson 100km. All three used wave for much of their tasks. Darren Lodge notched up yet another marathon, this time flying for over 5 hours in his LS8. Destinations unknown. In addition around a dozen club members and a few visitors were in the air for between one and five hours so there had to be 100's of kms flown and no doubt stories to tell. All four club singles flew, Andy Hadfield having the longest with over three hours in the DG303 and being the last one to land. Good to see Sue Aherne back in the Discus with a flight of over one hour and Toby Wilson emphasised his liking for the Astir with two flights, one of which was just under two hours. Chris Booker achieved the same time in the same glider earlier in the day. Checks, training flights and trial lessons ensured all the 2-seaters were kept busy and, in view of the good conditions, no doubt lots of happy P2's (and maybe instructors as well?)
Monday 17th:
Unbroken sunshine and a gentle westerly gave soaring opportunities all day with many pilots taking advantage. Generally it was a blue thermal day with rare wisps of short lived Cu. A visitor from the Essex club, Paul Robinson, found wave which took hime to around 7000ft and an extended tour of the local area.
Similarly Steve Thompson contacted wave in the blue and decided to abandon his declared 300km Yorkshire yoyo and tackle the club wave 200km instead. That turned to worms when he failed to find more wave and crept back to the Bank. There the thermals seemed good so he set off on the club 100km task but grovelled at York and sneaked back in to the site after 170 epic kms. Full points for perseverence!
John Ellis, Polly and Paul Whitehead, Martyn Johnson, Duncan Pask, Bill Payton and Les Rayment all flew their own gliders for between two and fours hours. No clues as to tasks flown.
It was another busy day for the club 2-seaters with varied flight times averaging well over half an hour. Similarly the club singles were utilised - Alan Beaumont recording the longest flight with 1.5 hours in the Astir.
PS: I have great admiration for George's accurate and detailed blogs over a long period of time and now realise how much time and effort he has put in. One very useful source of information is Flightlog from website: "flightlog.glidernet.org" which shows accurate details of all Flarm equipped glider flights Worldwide. Sutton Bank is on the database and its possible to reconcile the entries with our written logs. The system falls apart if a glider's Flarm details are not registered with "Flarmnet.org" in which case there is no identification, just a random 8 digit number which changes every flight. Please register your Flarm if you havn't already done so, its dead easy to add it to the database. There is plenty of advice at the club if you need it.
On a similar theme the National Ladder is a great help in determining who has done what. Again many pilots use this regularly (thank you) but some don't or only occasionally. Your flight doesn't have to be epic to go on there but it does enhance the reputation of YGC if the rest of the UK gliding fraternity can see what we are up to. If you don't want to include the flight in any ladder points claim you can opt out when its submitted and just the task will be shown. Useful if you didn't quite make a TP but still want to show your task. PLEASE record your distance and height exploits on the ladder, its quick and easy and helps establish the YGC as THE place to go soaring. Thanks PL
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.