The Best Of Gliding Days

Sorry for the late entry but I have just got back from Aston Downs. Don't ask; the weather is pants and the comp has just had one flying day. Both my pilots, indeed everybody, landed out on Sunday. We finished retrieving at about 10:15pm. Anyway, back to Friday....

I was only at the club to fly a couple of trials and had spent much of the morning at work. Everybody was rigging and talking of 300km. This had been my personal target for the season but work had got in the way on the other good days. Fortunately other arrangements were made for the trial flights and after rigging I found myself at the back of the launch queue at 12:30 with TIB MEN NOS TIB programmed in. A total of 305 km giving me the option of cylinders as well as sectors.

My turn to launch, up to 1800' when a surge induced me to release early! I turned back to the non-existent lift and realised that I should go back into the start sector so as not to miss the distance. I dolphined back, turned down task and into a splendid thermal to 3500' and thence to Mendlesham. I turned the sector and cylinder, keeping the options open, climbed again and set off for Northampton. Having left gliding range of TIB I was feeling more relaxed, an odd thing psychology! Things went well, I stayed close to track, always high enough to go over ATZs but seemed to hit a wall at Cambridge. I think the sky was recycling, so I pushed further west and reconnected with strong lift; and so to Northampton. My only concern was time, the 10 - 12 kt headwind was pushing the possible return time dangerously toward sea breeze front time for TIB.

Turning NOS (just the cylinder because I thought I was running short of time) the electric vario stopped working, the first sign of battery failure. I had only one battery after Thursday so I shut everything except the logger down to conserve power. Flying by the seat of your pants is good fun when it is going well, and it was going well, and I stayed high all the way to Lakenheath. Even a conservative estimate suggested I could final glide from 6000' the 53 km to TIB sea breeze or not, so I did!

Four and a half hours after starting I returned to a deserted airfield. Only one member at the control point so I assumed everyone else had finished, but no, last to start, first to finish! Why can't I do that in competitions?

A positively brilliant day. My thanks to Mick, for letting me go, Will for suggesting the task, Jenny for being my OO and to all the other club pilots for making a day of it, how lucky are we to be able to do this? A special thanks to Adrian for his generosity; cheers.