The change in the weather brought many members out of hibernation and the parking area was full by late morning.
First flight to test out JPC after it's ARC renewal was at 9:30 the launch taking me to 2,100 ft with cloudbase at 2,800 ft. As the day progressed the lift and cloudbase increased to such an extent that we had to put a limit on soaring as it was quite possible to stay up for quite some time.
With all the club gliders in the air at once this was the scene at the launch point..
With good launches and strong climbs to excess of 4,500 ft we managed 42 launches with 18 flights managing a flight of over 1 hour.
Chris Bessent and Nigel Burt took the Puchacz on its first XC flight of the season to Lyneham and back surprising us all by returning by air :-) Jim Clarke took the Nimbus for a run round Devizes, Didcot and Oxford, Richard Dann took the LS3 away for a few hours and Darren McKillop took me and JPC (almost) to the M4 junction at Hungerford at a reassuring (but unnecessary!) 4,800 ft :-)
Finally congratulations must go to John Goodwin who was sent solo by Carol
Phil
6 private gliders were rigged and 4 club gliders were kept busy. 28 folks flew and average flight time was 59 minutes (the two 3 hour flights from Jim C and Trevor helped bring the average up). Not only did the forecast good day draw a few members out of hibernation, it also tempted Clive H back after long lapse from flying - hopefully his 52 minute flight with Carol will tempt him back on a regular basis.
ReplyDeleteSteve, if you exclude the TLFs what was the average?
ReplyDeleteAverage 1h:02m off 40 flights if you exclude the launch fails;
ReplyDeleteaverage 1h:15m off 32 flights if you also exclude the "didn't soar".
BTW All this talk of "managing an hour or more" is nothing to do with how difficult the soaring was. It was all to do with it being minus 5 or lower at the tops of the climbs.