Friday 4th to Saturday 5th October 2024
Posted: 12/10/2024 11:56
Friday 4th. The high pressure remained in place, resulting in a misty morning in the Vale of York, with sunny skies thereafter and blossoming Cumulus from late morning/early afternoon. resulting in 27 launches from runway 20 into the light to moderate SE'ly. The thermal lift proved to be strong enough to lead to 13 flights of 30 minutes or more with 7 of these over an hour, Steve Thompson in his Ventus 2bt flying a 160 OLC km XC to Market Weighton, Castle Howard and Pocklington and visitor Graham Morris covering 91 OLC kms flying locally with an excursion S to between Sutton on Forest and Foston. Cloud base rose to around 4,000' asl with average peak thermal strength around 3 kts, with the visitors from Stafford GC, David Gill in his Discus and Barney Crump in his DG200, joining YGC pilots, John Marsh in his DG303, John Ellis in his DG808 and Darren Lodge in his LS8-18 in having over an hour of local soaring. While no 2 seater flights extended over an hour, John Carter took Adam Sayer for a 55 minute Assistant Instructor training flight in the DG1000 while Chris Collingham did 2 BI training flights with John Forrester, first in the DG500 and then in K21 JVZ. The 2 K21s were also busy flying 7 First Flight pupils with Bob Calvert, Adam Sayer, Tim Stanley and Dave McKinney sharing P1 duties.
Saturday 5th. The high pressure continued in place, so it was another day of initially sunny skies, Cumulus from late morning and a SSE'ly wind that had increased to moderate. Operations were off runway 20, initially by AT, but increasingly turbulent conditions and low climb rates on the tow out led to a change to winching in the early afternoon after 8 launches. Winching added 13 launches to the day's total, but with launch heights of 600'-700' off the relatively short run and marginal soaring conditions on the southern ridge, the 6 minutes by John Carter/Duncan Pask proved to be the longest duration flight via this method of launching. The AT operations, which included 3 for First Flight pupils, generated 2 flights of over 30 minutes, Bob Calvert taking one of First Flight pupils for 33 minutes in K21 JVZ and Bruce Grain/John Forrester spending 47 minutes in K21 continuing with John's BI training as they soared the White Horse ridge using ridge triggered thermal conditions off the last AT launch 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.