Saturday 20th April 2024
Posted: 22/04/2024 20:28
Saturday 20th. A clear blue, sunny start soon led to Cumulus development as a light to moderate N'ly wind blew, with consequential operations off runway 02, 25 ATs being the day's total. Although the number of flights exceeding an hour numbered 6, only 3 ventured far from site with Steve Thompson in his Ventus bt completing 234 km of his 313 km declared task around Alston, Gargrave W, Selset Reservoir and Masham. A slow crossing of the Vale of York due to tricky soaring conditions meant he ran out of time to complete the task, but found much better conditions over the Pennines climbing to a maximum altitude of 5,200' asl and using a convenient convergence on the way to Alston. The other cross country flights were by Toby Wilson/Chris Booker in the DG500, but this wasn't completed either as, after turning York East and Rufforth South, they landed out some 6.8 km SSW of site after covering 75 km, while Fred Brown in his Ventus ct visited close to Northallerton and Ripon an estimated distance of 65 km. Other > an hour pilots included John Carter/Malcolm Morgan in the DG1000, 1:22, John Ellis in his DG800, 1:04, Jamie Quartermaine in the Discus, 1:28 and Adam Sayer in his ASW19, 1:49. In addition there were an additional 7 flights of between 30 and 60 minutes including Amelia Forrester's 59 minutes in Astir DPO during which she visited Thirsk and Helmsley to clock up 33 km. Locally, cloud base rose to just under 4,000' asl with average thermal strengths of 1-2 kts with some pilots finding average peak rates of over 3 kts. In among all the above activity 5 First Flight pupils were flown.
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.