Wednesday 29th to Thursday 30th May 2019
Posted: 31/05/2019 13:46
Wednesday 29th. The wind had become a light to moderate SSE'ly as the warm front of an Atlantic depression approached from the west. Initially sunny skies soon clouded over, but with the front only slowly approaching the weather remained flyable all day and the launch total reached 59, with the pilots and gliders of the VGC taking advantage of the conditions. In spite of the increased cloud cover, mostly at medium level, there were Cumulus underneath which provided soaring opportunities, best utilised by Rob Bailey in his ASG29 who, initially following the better weather from Helmsley to Cayton Bay on the east coast, then came back to Sutton before going south to Kexby, east of York before returning to Sutton in a flight of just over 4 hrs and 194 km. No one else strayed very far from site, although Father and Son, Albert and Martin Newbery visited Helmsley and Kirbymoorside in a flight of just under 3 hrs in their DG1000. All the other pilots who had between 1-2 hours flying time stayed local, these being John Castle in his SB5b, Corny Cornelius in his K6cr, Polish visitor L Miroslaw in his Foka 4 and YGC pilots Chris Booker in his LS1 and Nora van Genutsen in her Ka6e. Mr Miroslaw's Foka 4 flew a further twice, one with the owner and the second with Australian visitor Paul Dickson. With Gary Pullen also flying his Foka 4, the day was probably the first for a long time with two Foka 4's airborne from the same site. Just to prove that the day was not totally soarable, Martin Cooper and Peter Brookes landed out in Martin's Capstan. The day also saw 2 T21's fly, with VGC's Bill Cook and Ken Reed having 2 flights in their T21 and YGC's Nick Gaunt and Tor Tavener each having 2 flights each, Tor taking up Paul Dickson, a visitor from Australia. Although only a small percentage of the day's launches of runway 20 exceeded an hour, a much larger percentage, around 40%, exceeded 30 minutes including most of the 38 private owners who flew. In the evenign the VGC visitors enjoyed a dine in night.
Thursday 30th. The front which had remained over the western side of the UK on Wednesday, had traveled further east overnight, so the morning was damp with low cloud, light rain and drizzle at times the air mass having completely changed as evidenced by the nighttime minimum temperatures at RAF Toplcliffe Tuesday's being 1.4C and Wednesday's being 11.3C. The low cloud rain and drizzle cleared away around lunch time, allowing flying to commence around 1330 hrs off runway 24 as the wind had become a moderate to fresh WSW'ly, so it was a winching day. The conditions were considered a little too sporting for the majority of the VGC gliders, with the exception of the ASK18 of Steve Codd, who had 2:36 hrs of hill soaring with a touch of wave off his second flight of the day, climbing to 3,400' asl. Steve's time was only exceeded by that at Jesper Mjles, who, flying the DG303 had 2:53, with Ken Reed and Bill Cook swapping their T21 for K21 JVZ and also having a > 2 hr flight. Bruce Grain and Josh Abbey had 1:10 in the DG500 while Steve Codd had 59 minutes off his first flight of the day. the day's truncated flying totalled 9 launches. The social whirl for the VGC visitors continued with a Yorkshire Night with a Yorkshire themed dinner and quiz.
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.