Plug for Landable Fields DB

Now that many of us are addicts of glidernet, we can see that the last couple of days have been difficult with the high pressure becoming established, and the continually lowering inversion.

On 23rd we can see gaggles forming near the start point,

 

 and even the rest of the grid getting ready to launch. 

Yesterday we could see a whole bunch of gliders at <1,000' near Ely and Littleport

This is a good time of year to be thinking about landing out. Much better than say May and June, when the crop is long, and a land-out could mean minor repairs. It would be good if you could see all the good land-able strips nearby at that time of year.

With that in mind a couple of us in East Anglia have started gathering some info's on Landable fields. For Norfolk Gliding Club Mike Crook has a folder of land-able fields in the area. I have gathered a couple electronically working with Martin Gregorie of Cambrdige GC (I have yet to reconcile the two).

A couple of file-formats are supported, and you can find the info on his website, here. The gist is you can download it as additional waypoint info, and it can show in your glide computer as options to land at, should you need it. XCSoar will even predict arrival height there (other programs probably do, but I have no recent experience).

If you have spotted an airfield (hopefully from high enough to be thinking about your task, not landing), it would be good to have it validated. Martin is interested in both positive and negative affirmation on the sites. We want to remove a strip from the DB once it has been ploughed over.

New stuff is also interesting. As an example, I took a picture of Fen End Farm (52º18.800N 000º07.400E) strip last year and have only just this week got around to asking, and yesterday had its existence confirmed by the owner. Google Maps / Sat view is still showing it as a normal field. We need to update the database and add it back in.

Fen End Farm strip from N of Great Ouse

 If you have any Farm strip sightings, or helpful comments, please update Martin Gregorie (look for the contact page on his web-site).

You can also drop a note on this post in the short term.