Up, up and away (Part 1)

Earlier in the year, I found out that the gliding club was running a weeks cross country course - just what I need to get my bronze and cross country endorsement completed. Using up the last of my paid annual leave; I booked the time off work and as if by some kind of divine intervention - the weather has gone completely shit, with rain forecast for every single day. If you're in the Yorkshire area this week, I can only apologise.

I imagine the universe thought it was pretty clever at this point - it likes to troll me in subtle ways, but I had a plan - turn up a day early and fly on the Sunday.

The forecast for the day was actually quite decent; a little wind in the right direction meant that if it panned out, I might finally be able to do that elusive winch solo which has been signed off and then subsequently rained off twice this year. For that, we need wind of a reasonable strength hitting our ridge to guarantee some lift, since our winch is only good for about 600' - a height that you might consider a failed launch if you were flying from a flat site.

Sunday morning's briefing indicated that whilst the forecast was largely correct, the stronger winds were likely to be found a little higher up, so the winch stayed in the workshop and aerotows from runway 24 were the order of the day.

A new plan then.  As a pre-bronze pilot, the rules allow me to venture out to around 5 miles from the airfield on the condition that I remain within gliding range of the site, Thirsk is around that distance out to the west, with Helmsley a similar way out to the East.  Since the wind was basically westerly, the safe option was to try and make Thirsk; the wind would try and push me back to the airfield which meant that a return would be quick and with minimal height loss should altitude become a concern.

It was a busy day at the club, with the days usual mix of visitors - scout groups, trial flights, one member had brought a group of friends to fly and the conditions had tempted some of the private owners to rig their own machines. I think there were a couple of visiting pilots too, there were certainly one or two gliders I didn't recognise.

I made sure my name was on the flying list both for the two seaters, and for the Astir single seaters - as an pre-bronze pilot, there's always the chance that the duty instructor wants a check flight or maybe even makes the decision that conditions aren't favourable for the club single seaters at all. Whilst I was off looking for someone to tell me whether I could fly it, someone jumped into G-DDPO and took off, fair enough though - If you're not ready to go and someone else is, the aircraft are better off flying where they're earning money for the club to invest back into facilities.

Eventually, I found someone to give me a quick brief and sign off the flight with no check needed, it's good to know that people trust me enough to bring myself and the aeroplane back in one piece. When the Astir returned after what must have been an hour, it just went to show that it was a soarable day, so I brought it on the flight line, did my checks and got ready for my tow.

I released at 2,000' QFE and quickly decided that the local ridge was where I wanted to be, I could see clouds streaming right across it which suggested to me that it might be acting as a good thermal source and with luck, the wind might be such to reduce the sink should I not have been able to find one that I could use.

You often hear other pilots at the club talking about 'getting away' which is cross country speak, I assume, for getting the first good climb near the site to enable them to safely glide away from the home airfield.  Even though I was only planning on going to Thirsk, I still needed height, and I was steadily losing it.  At 1,000' I would need to consider landing and at 800' I needed to be starting a circuit for sure.

I found something at about 1,400' but only managed to extract about 200' before it had disappeared, or I'd lost it - one or the other. I dropped back down again looking for another, and this time only scraped about 100' back. Things didn't seem to be going well and at one point I was down to around 1,000' but managed to find a 600' climb but it seemed like bumbling about at 1,500 and not really achieving anything was going to be the extent of the days flying.

I'm a tryer though, and so whilst I had the height I would push out towards Sutton-Under-Whitestonecliffe as the next clouds formed nearby, try to find the lift, and allow myself to be blown back to the ridge. I had a couple more goes at it, each time just gaining around 300' and losing it again looking for something better.

It was about 12:28pm when I was at about 1,000' and I was looking toward the village at another big, dirty grey cloud, so I headed over. This one must have been bigger and dirtier than the others, because I hit the jackpot. The variometer was flicking off the scale, and suddenly I was climbing like mad. It only took about three minutes to reach 3,500ft - definitely enough for me to 'get away'.

In part 2 - heading downwind of the site to Helmsley. Read it now.

9 kts on the mech vario, 7.1 on the averager.

Looking back Eastwards to the airfield.