Tuesday 6th to Thursday 8th December 2022
Posted: 08/12/2022 21:45
Tuesday 6th. The wind had backed into the NNW and lessened in strength to light to moderate as the Maritime Arctic air mass became established, dropping the maximum day time temperature to around 4.7C. Low cloud and frequent rain showers again prevented any flying.
Wednesday 7th. A light to moderate WNW'ly wind blew on a day of clear blue skies and bright sunshine, though the latter did little to raise the temperature which only reached around 2C. Flying commenced around 1100 hrs off runway 02 as John Tayler took the day's only First Flight pupil for a 20 minute flight in K21 JVZ. The day's 14 ATs were spilt 7/6 between the Perkoz of the visiting Cambridge University GC and JVZ of the YGC, with the remaining launch being by Martin Newbery in Astir DPO. Lift was hard to come by with flight times a direct function of launch height, but YGC's Fred Brown with KA Kaisin of the Cambridge GC found some zero sink and even a little bit of lift in an E/W beat between Gormire and Sutton village, resulting in a flight time of 28 minutes, the longest of the day. The only other flights of over 20 minutes were by members of the Cambridge GC in their Perkoz, instructor J Shaw having 25 minutes with M McCoy and 23 minutes with C Chalmers Brown, both aided by tows to 3,000' QFE.
Thursday 8th. The wind was still from the WNW but had declined slightly in strength, making ATs off runway 02 somewhat easier. The day's total of 9 flights included one for a First Flight pupil, but flying was terminated around 1345 hrs due to the progressive lowering of the increasingly more widespread cloud, with even a few flakes of snow falling. Lift was again hard to find so there was only one flight of 20 minutes, this by Steve Ogden in the Astir who managed to find some reduced sink and even a bit of zero. On the 4th flight of the day, Guy Hartland and P2 M McCoy in the Perkoz suffered a weak link failure while at 750' QFE some 2 Km SSE of the airfield, but had sufficient height to make it back. As on Wednesday, apart from the single Astir flight, launches were split between YGC's K21 JVZ and the Cambridge GC's Perkoz, 5/3 in this case.
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.