Thursday 31st October to Friday the 1st November 2024.
Posted: 02/11/2024 14:28
Thursday 31st. A light to moderate WSW'ly brought mainly overcast skies with a low base but sufficient gaps to allow flying to take place, with 25 launches off runway 24 and most landings on 20. The day's 10 flights of over 30 minutes. of which 9 were over an hour, were mainly wave based, although some hill soaring was also utilised, Dean Crosby's 1:03 in the Discus being typical, with weak wave being used to maintain 3,000' asl near Felixkirk for a while, before a retreat to the main bowl's hill lift. operating there between 5-700' QFE. Other > an hour pilots, Neil Paverley in his Nimbus 2, Rob/Spencer Bailey in the DG1000, Andrew Wilmot in his ASW19 and Chris O'Doyle in his Discus t, all had limited wave climbs in areas as diverse as Felixkirk, Topcliffe and Sutton village, with peak altitudes of 3-4,000' asl, while Bruce Grain/Sarah Nolan bucked the trend by hill soaring the main bowl for 1:06 and Chris Teagle spent most of his 1:17 flight in his LS8t-18 doing multiple engine starts. 3 pilots had more substantial wave climbs by using their engines to go further west. Fred Brown, after climbing to 4,200' asl near Northallerton, used his engine to get to the Ripon area were a climb to 5,900' asl resulted, a further 100' being added near Pateley Bridge followed by a return to Sutton after 3:27. Bob Calvert in his Discus 2ct climbed to 4,100' asl near Northallerton before having to have a brief engine burn near Ripon after descending to 1300' asl and then contacting the wave and climbing to 5,400' asl. Transition to the Pateley Bridge area resulted in a climb to 10,400' asl from where Bob flew to Ullswater and the southern Lakes, where the following photo of Helvellyn was taken, before returning to site via Garforth, covering 260 OLC km in the process and spending 6:43 in the air.
Bob reported very little wind at altitude so circling was the best way to stay in the lift. The third pilot to go west was Jesper Mjels who used the engine of his DG400 to get to a wave climb to 6,500' asl east of Masham, following this by climbs to 10,900' asl near Richmond and to 11,600' near Selset Reservoir, Jesper then flew further west to Great Dun Fell before returning to Sutton via Aysgarth and Ripon, a flight of 4:05 that covered 200 OLC km. Among all this activity, 4 First Flight pupils were flown and Bruce Grain/Andrew Bedford did an O/R to Rufforth in the Falke.
Friday 1st. A light WSW blew all day accompanied by generally bright hazy sunshine as the high pressure continued in place, although low cloud restricted launch heights at times. A lack of any significant lift meant that none of the day's 9 AT's off runway 24 exceeded 30 minutes flight time, while low cloud meant that 2 of the day's 5 First Flight pupils had two flights each, with release heights of 1,000' QFE instead of the usual 2,500' QFE. The higher release height resulted in flight times of 21-25 minutes for the other First Flight pupils, the 25 minutes being by Paul Whitehead's flight as P1 in K21 JVZ, Paul being able to operate between 2,400' and 3,200' asl for a little while just to the west of Thirsk.
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