First 500 - finally

A late night text from Tom Smith saying "Planning 750 tomorrow, west forecast to be mega. Getting to TIB at 8:50" was enough to send me to SeeYou thinking a 500 might be a sensible compromise. Dave Masson's forecast was short and to the point "possibly the day of the year" was more than enough encouragement. RASP and wind forecast suggested that getting west of BSE was the first challenge, staying west would be a good idea and that the final stretch back to TIB was going to be compromised by a wind swinging round to the north and a probable sea breeze from the East coast. A high cloud base and a final glide in from Newmarket was what I was hoping for ... so let's try EDGehill - Cambridge West - Silverston (520km).

Sunday morning brought me a text from Mark saying that the glider and trailer were serviceable, I didn't notice he had sent it late the night before and his response to my call at 7:45 was surprisingly free from expletives! Having rigged and watered all that was left to do was suggest to James Francis that it would be a good day to try for 300 - "but I've only flown it once" attracted the response "good - so you know how it works then ..."

Tom left at 10:00 and as I decide 11 was a sensible launch time I was glad to see that Tom had got away when I climbed into the 27. A tow to just shy of 3,000 gave me a good start height to push out into the west where the cu base was already up to around 2,500.

A REMINDER TO ALL ... when flying badge flights the start options are 1) a 45° sector 2) a 1km line or 3) a 500m radius barrel NOT the 12km line ... I did manage to get 1 logger point in the sector - phewww, and James F is relieve the sector is infinitely large or we would both have missed out on the claims!

Progress out of Suffolk was slow and I was relived to get to Newmarket where the weather was picking up and 3000 was achievable at 3kts. A low point at Oakington led me to dump my water before picking up 2.6kts got me going. It was now 12:30 - 90mins for 90km - not fast but hopefully it was going to improve.

Cloud base after St Neots so was up to 4,500 with regular 3.5kt climbs and the rest of the run to Edgehill was at about 90kph with a light headwind. I was reassured that Dave Masson and RASP had been right by the number of gliders I saw, perhaps a FLARM should be on this years early Christmas present list.

The run back down wind to Cambridge was rewarded with a 6.5kt climb just short of the TP to give a tactical high downwind TP before turning at
14:50 and having dragged the task speed up to 80kph I now had a chance of finishing earlier than I'd first feared, at about 17:30, so hopefully the conditions east of Newmarket would be OK.

Back to Silverstone was another breeze, lots of gliders marking climbs, some unusual sights like the Super Dimona G-LIDA doing as its name suggests with the engine off!
I tried to contact Tom a couple of time but was rewarded with Radio Cook on full bore each time so mostly flew in blissful radio silence. Having turned SIL at 1540 the next 100km was uneventful and reasonably paced, approaching Cambridge the main concern was to get up to cloud base which was now above 5,200.

A final climb at 17:00 at Red Lodge on the A11 took me to 4500 with a 44km glide - the sky ahead was still looking good so off I went ... alas none of the cloud on track gave any indication of lift and I squeaked onto the end of the Grass on 08 with 100' to spare.

All over in a mere 6:13 for 84kph - a task I've attempted whenever I and a glider and the weather have coincided since 2004!

Flight on ladder: http://www.bgaladder.co.uk/dscore.asp?FlightID=21133