Tuesday 3rd to Wednesday 4th September 2019
Posted: 05/09/2019 11:12
Tuesday 3rd. The airstream continued to flow from the Southwesterly quadrant and be of a showery nature and its variation from WSW'ly to SSW'ly while staying light to moderate, caused the operating runway choice to alternate between 20 and 24. Winching and ATing were again on offer, but only 2 ATs were flown to add to the 8 winch launches, with 2 self launches resulting in a launch total of 12. Staying up proved to be a challenge, with only 1 flight of over an hour and 3 over 30 minutes. The >1hr flight saw Jesper Mjels, self launching in his DG400, contact wave over Full Sutton and climb to around 8,700' asl, visiting the northern outskirts of York and Ripon in his flight of 2:25. John Ellis, also self launching in his DG800 had to be content with 49 minutes, while Albert Newbery, first with Malcolm Sanderford in K21 off an AT and then with M MacAndrew in K21 KLW off a winch launch, managed to find sufficient lift to extend their flight times to between 30 and 35 minutes.
Wednesday 4th. Wednesday was definately a winching day off runway 24 as a gusty, moderate to fresh W'ly blew, the gustiness combined with heavy showers leading to the suspension of flying around midday. A resumption of flying after a break of around 90 minutes was relatively short lived, as more extensive rain led to the end of flying after a further hour. In spite of these interruptions, the day saw 16 winch launches, with the majority leading to soaring flights, as a combination of hill, thermal and tantalising indications of wave led to 13 of the day's flights exceeding 30 minutes including 4 that exceeded an hour. Course members Graham King, Joan Hartley and Bill Goodliff all managed to add between 34 minutes to 1:16 to their log books. The only private owner to rig and fly, Mr Hartley, had 1:29 in his Pegasse in the morning, this period also providing Ron Beezer with 1:30 in the Discus and John Carter and Adam Sayer with 1:01 in the DG1000. John noted that slow climbs in wave were invariably disrupted by convective activity. In the afternoon's session, Andy Parish and Dave Trouse had 1:12 in K21 JVZ and Chris Collingham and Keith Davey had 57 minutes in the DG1000. Wave and thermal effects plus showers led to Will Blackburn and First Flight pupil Geoffrey Smith having just 13 minutes in the DG500 before making a landing across 20 just before flying was suspended around midday.
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.