Mike Crook's Silver duration & height

Sunday 14th June

I had planned to go flying on Thursday but a quick look at the forecast weather soon put me off. However the forecast for Friday looked pretty good and in particular the RASP charts showed a potential cloud base of 5500ft with a reasonably long period of good thermals possible do I thought that the Silver C height and endurance might just, with a little bit of luck , be on.

Friday morning was a beautiful blue day with virtually no cloud around except a few small cumulus over the distant coast. After some discussion a launch at about 1215hrs was planned. At the appointed time we were still in a large blue area centred on Tibenham although the coastal cumulus was starting to build and so at 1255hrs I launched behind the Tug thinking that even if I didn't get the endurance time I would get a decent flight anyway.

Climbing through 1700ft we passed through what seemed a decent thermal so I took an early release and turned back to find it. The immediate sky was still blue but I manged to get into, and of course out of the thermal, and spent the next hour floating around between 1400ft and 2700ft. At this point 5 hrs seemed a very long way off. Over in the east the sea breeze front had started to take a more positive form and lumps of decent cumulus were starting to develop.

Eventually I got a good contact and a decent climb up to cloud base at about 4700ft. I set off touring the towns and turning points in the immediate area of Tibenham very conscious of the fact that I wanted to keep as high as possible rather than go for distance. As the cloud developed and the sea breeze front moved further towards me eventually I was able to troll up and down the edge for some time without too much of a struggle. The cloud base steadily increased and I eventually moved up with it getting to 5400ft. I was reasonably confident that this would give me the required height climb not withstanding any convoluted calculation that might be involved.

The sea breeze front continued its march westwards passing over Tibenham where I set up what amounted to be a holding pattern over the field at about 5000ft +/- 200ft for what seemed like an hour although it was probably less. This was far more reminiscent of my commercial flying days but it did pass the time and the last two hours passed quite quickly.

By about 1730hrs the front had started to dissipate and with it the cumulus also started to disappear. I had one of those sinking feelings that I was going to drop down just a few minutes short! Luck however was on my side and there were enough residual thermals around for me to hover around 3000ft to 4000ft until finally 5 hrs airborne arrived. I made good and sure I had a reasonable excess to allow for for the tow time and then made a high speed dart for terr firma, by now my backside aching and feet that felt as if they had gone to sleep. According to my GPS, 241 track miles and all within 10 miles of Tibenham and as someone remarked an awful lot of circles! Nevertheless, a great flight.