Thursday 21st to Friday 22nd March 2024
Posted: 23/03/2024 10:40
Thursday 21st. A weak cold front travelling southwards brought low cloud and light rain for most of the day, so there was no flying. In the evening a 2nd group of ATC cadets visited the club and were introduced to gliding via a practical session on how to measure the lift generated by a wing, a tour of the gliders, winch and tugs and a session on the simulator. This followed a similar visit on Tuesday.
Friday 22nd. The cold front left the site in a moderate W'ly with Cumulus developing early, so it was a day of winching off runway 24, 28 launches being flown be the end of the flying day with significant wave climbs and cross countries flown. 5 private owners flew, each having between 4:07 and 5:49 and accounting for 5 of the 11 flights to exceed and hour, with a further 9 flights of between 30 and 60 minutes. Steve Thompson's Ventus 2b did not provide a Flarm trace and Dean Cosby's trace from his LS10 st was very intermittent so I am not able to provide confirmed details of their flights although Dean's trace indicated he had climbed to 8,500' asl. Bob Calvert in his Discus 2ct, Chris Handzlik in his DG300 and Fred Brown in his Ventus ct all had good wave flights, although while Bob and Chris had early contact with the wave near RAF Leeming, using thermal lift to get there, Fred spent the 1st 2.5 hrs of his flight in the area between Northallerton, Boroughbridge and Sutton below 4,000' before eventually contacting the wave and then visited areas around Catterick and Richmond before returning to RAF Leeming where he climbed to just over 16,000' asl, the highest of the day, and then turned Wetherby South and Tontine before returning to site, an estimated distance of 225 km. Bob's initial wave climb at RAF Leeming took him to 9,500' asl from where he visited areas around Masham, Pateley Bridge, Ripon, Bishop Auckland and Harrogate North before returning to Sutton, a distance of around 220 km. Chris Handzlick in his DG300 also contacted the wave near RAF Leeming, climbing to 10,700' asl and then flew a 187 km task with TP's at Richmond, Wetherby and Leyburn, climbing to his best altitude of 15,000' asl 6 km to the SW of Ripon having descended to 4,700' asl to the west of RAF Leeming as he made his way south from the Catterick/Richmond area. Chris's, total estimated distance flown was around 230 km. Most of the other >an hour flights used mainly thermal lift or a combination of thermal and hill lift, cloud base rising to around 4,000' asl and average thermal strengths being typically 2 kts with peak rates of up to 3 kts. Conrad Thwaites flying the Discus, visited Carlton Bank using a combination of hill and thermal lift maintaining 700-1100' QFE in the former and, towards the end of his flight, climbing to 5,000' asl in wave just to the SE of Thirsk, while CFI Bruce Grain, also flying the Discus, had a slow climb to 5,300' asl some 4 km to the NW of Thirsk. Other > an hour pilots included Austin Hartland in Astir DPO, George Rowden in the Discus, Clive Swain/John Forrester in the DG500 and Graham Cooksey/Brian Whitfield in K21 KLW, while Graham/Tony Kirby in KLW, Steve Ogden in Astir FSH and Guy Hartland/Konrad Kawalec in K21 JVZ all had between 50 and 60 minutes on a good soaring day at Sutton.
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.