The occurrences and happenings at Shalbourne Soaring Society. A gliding club near Andover, Newbury and Hungerford.

Sun 17th - Sun and soaring!

As forecast/promised it was sunny and thermic. Those that weren't there - I told you so! Most of the day the thermals were quite broken and difficult to connect/stay with but Pablo and Jim in the K13 along with Trevor in the K8 connected and had around an hour's soaring in a street/convergence/magic lift line to the north of the club. It seemed to be a white-gliders-don't-soar day for most of the rest! Being a SE wind, it was vital that people laid off enough and several didn't in spite of briefing. Nigel 'You thought I was nice until today' Burt was winching for much of the day, he came and apologised for chopping the first launch he wasn't happy with, but grinned more and more widely as the day went on and he found a new careless pilot to dump. It's a serious point - you MUST pay attention to crosswinds else when it's SE you will not get to the top of the launch. Nice to see Alicia and Tim from Upavon which was closed for the day, they also stayed for the XC Q&A later and asked most of the Q; hope they were happy with the A... Soaring again - summer is almost upon us (but meanwhile keep wearing the ski gear to prevent important bits freezing off) Liz

1 comment:

  1. Looking at the logs, it appears that the trick was launching at the right time. Jim/Pablo and Trevor launched 3 minutes apart and flew for 1:47 and 1:04 respectively. Launches before and after did circuits (maybe assisted by the Nigel effect?). The next best time was Jim with Selvam with 23 minutes. In fact, most of the other 10+ minute flights had Jim in the back seat.
    14 folks did 6 hours flying of 28 launches

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