Saturday 27th to Monday 29th April 2019
Posted: 01/05/2019 14:54
Saturday 27th. Saturday turned out to be a very wet, none flying day with 10.6 mm recorded, the rain being accompanied as usual by low cloud as a light to moderate NW'ly blew, all the consequence of named storm Hannah.
Sunday 28th. The aftermath of storm Hannah were cloudy skies and an initially light to moderate NNW'ly wind, this decreasing to become light by early afternoon. The cloud was initally too low to allow flying to take place but the day progressively brightened, allowing the first launch of the 19 flown on the day to take off around 1240 hrs. Somewhat surprisingly given the conditions, the day saw more single seater flights than 2 seater ones, 14 to 5, with 7 private owner launches. Persistence paid off for a number of pilots, for the day became soarable from late afternoon, allowing Mark Newburn to have 1:02 in the DG303 off his 4th flight of the day in this glider, Nora van Genugen to have 58 minutes off her second flight of the day in her Ka6e and Toby Wilson to have 33 minutes off his second flight of the day in his Std Cirrus. Bill Payton and Paul Bulmer showed that it wasn't just a single seater day with just over an hour in K21 JVZ from a 1651 take off.
Monday 29th. The overnight light wind conditions and a flow off the North Sea combined to generate a foggy start to Monday, the fog and Stratus not burning off sufficiently to allow flying to commence until just before 1400 hrs. A forecast of thermal conditions led to a number of private owners rigging, but a soaring day never really developed, so for the majority of private owners, it was a case of a practice rig/derig, the more cost concious ones not going as far as putting on their wing tape. Of the 3 private owners to fly, only one, George Goodenough in his Standard Cirrus, managed a flight time in excess of 30 minutes, 31 minutes in fact, although Les Rayment's flight in his DG800 was primarily for an engine test. John Carter's flight with P Hardwick in K21 JVZ off the first launch of the day proved to be the longest one, 48 minutes, with John also having 31 minutes in JVZ with John Shaw and Bruce Grain and First Flight pupil Gareth Jones having 32 minutes in the DG500. Flying came to an end just after 1700 hrs with 14 launches flown off runway 20, the light E'ly having slowly veered into the SE over the course of the day.
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.