Sunday 15th to Tuesday 17th January 2023
Posted: 19/01/2023 14:03
Sunday 15th. A moderate W'ly blew all day so ATs were off runway 24 with landings split between 24 and 20, while the last flight of the day did a hanger landing on 06. 18 launches were the day's total, with 7 flights exceeding 30 minutes although none exceeded an hour as wave augmented hill lift provided some soaring opportunities. John Forrester had the longest flight of the day, 48 minutes in Astir DPO, maintaining 1100-1300' QFE initially and then 900-1100' QFE mainly in the bowl immediately north of Gormire. John later had a 37 minute flight in Astir DSU, while daughter Amelia had 31 minutes solo in JVZ. Bruce Grain/Ivan Maczar in K21 JVZ has 46 minutes off the first flight of the day and did multiple transits between the main bowl and Boltby village, maintaining 1300-1500' QFE. Steve Thompson/Marian Stanley took a tow to 2,500' QFE in the DG500 and then found some weak wave south of Bagby, maintaining 1900' QFE for a while before a slow descent that had them landing after 39 minutes. Later, Steve, this time with P Frost in the DG500, used some weak wave to maintain their tow height of 2,000' QFE between Gormire and Sutton village before reverting to hill lift at 800' in the main bowl. The list of pilots having 30 minutes or more was completed by Dan McLean who had 30 minutes in Astir DPO.
Monday 16th. A light to moderate NW'ly bringing in an arctic maritime air mass saw the maximum temperature at Leeming only reach 1.6C, while a few light snow showers passed through. With the wind direction and strength expected to bring very turbulent take off conditions on runway 02 the day was scrubbed.
Tuesday 17th. The day was one of clear blue skies and a light to moderate W'ly. the temperature at Leeming having fallen to -5.3 C overnight, the day's maximum being 3.1C. The first AT launched at around 1040 hrs off runway 24 when Laurie Clarke/Neil Amos had 20 minutes in K21 JVZ, with the day's AT total being 4, an additional 3 in JVZ and 1 in Astir DPO. However, the main activity of the day was the inauguration of the use of the recently acquired Skylaunch winch. A morning briefing outlined the programme for the day, with initially only solo launches in both JVZ and DPO by full Cat instructors, followed by check flights for other instructors and club members. During the afternoon the DG1000 was also utilised for winch checks, with eventually 16 winch launches being flown. John Carter and Conrad Thwaites also were checked out on the winch by the Skylaunch team. In spite of the relatively light wind speed, launch heights off runway 24 were consistently to 6-800' QFE with the early flights being short duration circuits. Later in the day, the wind picked up sufficiently to provide some hill soaring, although flight times were restricted to 20=25 minutes to allow the maximum number of winch launches to be flown. The day ended with a debrief of the day's winching operations.
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.