Saturday 23 April 2011

Busy Easter Saturday: BGA Course, Glider swap, Met as promised

It was a very busy day at Tibenham today, with a big turn-out.

A week-long instructors course has started for the BGA, run by Dave Munroe. Most of their morning was taken up with class activities, but everyone was out on the field in the afternoon.

As the course involves spin excercises, the temporary swap of our Grob 103, with a Puchacz from Rattlesden was arranged.


Here is T12 getting a clean & wax from junior members:

And here the chairman returns triumphant with the Puchacz.
Note that the sky is still blue around lunch-time.


For once the met was pretty much right, with RASP showing Cu developing to the West of Tib, and the BBC predicting showers somewhere between Thetford and Cambridge.



From about 1300 BST, Cu were visible over Attleborough & Wymondham. If you were lucky, you could get just under 3K' in the blue over TIB. If you could reach WYM, then it was easy to get to 5K' under the clouds. A big shower cell did indeed develop over Lakenheath & Thetford. On the other side of it, max climbs were over 7K'. Here is Mildenhall, looking East, from about that height. The sky to the West went blue about 10K East of Ely.




South of Bury was still classic fair weather Cu, but the big shower cell stayed east of TIB all afternoon. Here it is from slightly north-east of Honington, looking NW.



... and finally from the ground (Runway 33, looking NW), around 1630. It never did reach Tibenham.



Here is the UK visible sat pic. at 1800.
Big cloud over Thetford!