Saturday 11th to Monday 13th September 2021

Posted: 13/09/2021 19:22

Saturday 11th.  A moderate W'ly meant it was a hill soaring day with some wave for those fortunate enough or skilled enough to contact it. I will leave it to those who contacted the wave to decide which category they fit into.   In all there were 35 winch launches and 2 ATs off runway 24 resulting in 25 flights of over 30 minutes, including 10 over an hour.  All but one of the latter were by private owners, with the exception being Chris Booker and Andy Hatfield's flight in the DG1000 with 1:26.  Hill lift was in plentiful supply, often augmented by thermal and  wave, so that 10 flights climbed to between 3-4,000' asl.  However, Paul Whitehead flying his Ventus used the majority of his 4 hr flight to climb to the day's maximum altitude of around 7,000' asl, the day's traces indicating wave lift over Dalton and further west between the East Coast Main line  and the A1M.  Apart from these vertical journeys, no one strayed far from the local area.  Paul's 4 hrs was the longest of the day, followed by Arthur Docherty's 3:24 in his ASW20 and Tony Drury's 2:13 in his DG303.  All the flying in club gliders was done in the 2 seaters with no club aircraft being flown solo.  With a long flying list and 5 First Flight pupils to fly, the longest 2 seater flights were by Kelly Teagle/Sarah Stubbs, 48 minutes in K21 JVZ and the identical time by Les Rayment/Charlie Atkin in the same glider, this being off the penultimate launch of the day, flying coming to an end around 1830 hrs after a good day of soaring. 

Sunday 12th.  The weather decided to return to the norm of the last few weeks, a light essentially NNW'ly to NNE'ly blowing, resulting in runway 06 being mainly used for ATing and 02 for landing.  28 launches resulted, with 8 by Private owners, 4 of the latter by members of the  large, YGC T21 syndicate, Nick Gaunt taking Arthur Docherty, and Ian McFarlane on 2 of his 3 flights  while flying solo on the one, Brian Wise also flying the T21 solo later in the day.  Lift was hard to come by, so  the majority of flights were airborne for 10-25 minutes, but around 1300 hrs 2 flights managed to utilise a brief period of convection, with visitors P Morgan and D Noble having 56 minutes in their Janus C, followed by Nick Gaunt's solo flight in his T21 of 35 minutes.  The day also saw 7 First Flight pupils flown and the departure of Justin Wills in his Buzzard to a southern location.

Monday 13th.  A light to moderate SE'ly brought cloudy skies that didn't encourage flying.  In the event only 3 dual launches in K21 JVZ were flown off runway 20 by P1 Dick Cole, resulting in flight times of 13 to 17 minutes.  The Falke doubled the day's total flight time by spending 47 minutes  exploring the area to the south of the site.  

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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