What a day! With a silver tinge – height for Charles McC; duration for Bob S and distance for Steve G. Between the 4 club gliders and 10 private ones (yes, 10!) we clocked up over 44 hours of flying and goodness know how many kilometres from first launch at 10:13 to last landing at 19:15.
The day started blue with promising looking clouds tantalisingly out of reach. The clouds got closer but our blue hole persisted with lots of gliders sitting off-line waiting for the trigger.
By midday Chris B could sit on his hands no longer and launched into the blue – but with some clouds within reach (well, if you are flying a Ventus). Chris was soon followed by Bob S. On landing it might have been mentioned to Bob that it was 5 hours not 5 minutes required for silver duration. Over the next couple of hours the remaining private gliders launched, after rethinking their tasks given the amount of blue to the north and west, and stuck to the sky. I started my flight with a visit to Newbury, flying due east then north following the energy, I got there without stopping to thermal and arrived 200′ higher than when I left Rivar. After a tricky scrape Jim C at one point in his flight headed south to play along the sea breeze front. Chris B clocked over 300km. There were reports of climbs of 7 knots getting to over 6,000′. Duty instructor Tim R was kept busy with 4 hours in the back seat over 9 launches. Other instructors (Bob B, Richard D, Alex J and yours truly) lent a hand providing another 8 launches and 5 hours of back seat flying.
All this flying would not have been possible with out the heroes of the day. Andrew P on the winch most of the day (and not getting to fly). James H responding to an emergency callout when frothy oil emerged from the winch engine. Paul M for log keeping most of the day. Special thanks to Tom F’s mum who provided delicious home baked chocolate brownies.
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