I was up at the crack of dawn to check RASP and the other forecasts. We were still in the grips of the stable high pressure air that has dominated for quite some time but there was a cold front due to pass though during the day which might change things. Anyway, I decided to stay at home and to try to finish off my kitchen worktops. I was keeping half an eye on the weather as I was interested to see if the cold front would make much difference. By lunchtime I had pretty much forgotten about it all when I noticed a tiny cumulus cloud through the window. 'Oh my god,' I said out loud. Poor Robyn thought I had just discovered something terrible in one of the cupboards. 'I've got to go,' I said. She now understood exactly what I meant!
I got to the airfield at about 1:30 and put my name on the list. People were just managing to stay up. There were thermals around but they were pretty tight and disorganised due to the relatively stiff Southerly wind. The K21 was free so I took a winch launch with Jan due to the fact that I was still getting back into it after a long layoff. We found a little lift but were back on the ground fairly shortly. The remnants of the front were starting to clear and it was all beginning to look rather promising. I had a feeling this was going to be a good chance for me to get a decent flight in. Timing seems to be everything in gliding and my turn in the Astir came round just about perfect. I got about 1350' from the winch and pushed South into the wind hoping to pick up some lift. It's a great feeling flying into lift, especially off the winch when conditions look good. So I was off, right up to 3000'. I have flown on days with reasonable lift but never anything as good as this. It just seemed to be getting better and better with the cloud base eventually reaching 5000' plus. For the first time I had the feeling it could actually be possible to go somewhere by flying from thermal to thermal. Not that I did go anywhere, but I'm sure I could have. After what seemed like ages I radioed down to see how long I had been up. Jenny told me 50 minutes and that there wasn't anyone else waiting for the glider. X-ray 19 told me to stay up for at least an hour and ten to get a bronze leg. At the time I thought this was Ray Hart flying Jenny's ASW 19 but I now think it was John R K. What he didn't tell me at the time was that if I had stayed up for 2 hours I could have got something towards my cross country endorsement. Anyway I decided I would just stay up there until someone told me to come down. The air was crystal clear by now and the view was stunning. It's just amazing how quickly things can change when a different air mass comes through. There was lift everywhere and I really felt like a proper glider pilot. Inevitably that call eventually came so I pulled the air brakes and was on the ground in about 10 minutes. I did a rubbish landing. Ray said the third one was OK!. There was an hour and thirty nine in the log book, which was by far my best and longest flight so far. I felt so calm and happy, having achieved that magical combination of a free glider, and perfect conditions.
When I got home I looked up the satellite pictures of the day (see below). You can clearly see the cold front pushing away the hazy high pressure air and replacing it with clear unstable air which immediately started to boil.
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