Friday 1st to Saturday 2nd April 2022
Posted: 03/04/2022 23:49
Friday 1st. The light to moderate N'ly brought in some showers, which were wintry at times, with overnight snow providing a thin cover to start the day. This soon melted but just added to the soggy nature of the airfield so there was no flying.
Saturday 2nd. The airfield had dried out sufficiently to allow flying, albeit with care needed to avoid soggy areas, so with a light to moderate NNE'ly blowing, operations were off runway 02. Slow moving large showers developed mainly to the S and W of the site, with most of the pilots undertaking cross country flights doing so in a NE/E'ly direction, with Church Houses being a popular TP. The one exception was Chris Handzlik who flew Sutton. Snainton, Rufforth, Sutton, 119 km, having abandoned his declared flight of Sutton, Pateley Bridge. Richmond, Sutton due to the showers . Climbing to 7.000'asl just north of York, and with the freezing level at 3,000' asl, Chris accumulated a lot of ice on his wings as well as icing up his TE probe, so a return to Sutton was considered the best option. Some ice was still present after landing as the following photo shows.
Rob Bailey in his ASG29t and Chris Booker in his LS1 were the 2 pilots to do an O/R to Church Houses with Rob continuing on to TPs at Masham, Sutton 1 and Helmsley before returning to site, a distance of 121 km. Apart from Chris Handzlik, climbs to 4,000 to 4,800'asl were the norm, with average thermal strengths of 1,6-2.4 kts while best climb rates were typically 3 kts, although Chris H had a best climb rate of 5.8 kts and Toby Wilson and David Key in K21 JVZ recorded a best climb rate of 4.1 kts as they visited Helmsley in their flight of 42 minutes. This time was also reached by Kelly Teagle/Naomi Kennard in K21 KLW, two of the 6 flights to have between 30 and 60 minutes flying time. Another of these pilots was Tomer Altman, who, flying K21 KLW solo for 45 minutes, almost reached Helmsley before being prevented by a wall of cloud and enjoyed his 80 kph return to Sutton, from which the following photo was taken. Tomer also passed his Bronze C examination on the day so dual congratulations are in order.
Apart from the above cross country pilots, the other pilot to have more than an hour of soaring flight was Steve Thompson who flew his Ventus locally for 1:11.
The day's 10 flights by private owners included 3 by the visitors from Husbands Bosworth in their DG505 and 2 by YGC member Thomasz Rusin, who accumulated 1:30 in his Jantar Std 3.
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