Yorkshire Inter-Club League 2018 & First Field Landing
The gliding season in the UK seems to be just about getting underway after a long, dull winter where not much could happen - even at our 7-day-a-week, 365-day-a-year club, most pilots have struggled to get flights in due to the conditions.
My plan for the year is to go for the Silver badge (got my height gain a few weeks ago) and get some cross country kilometres under my belt. With the latter in mind, I helped to organise our club's participation in the Yorkshire Inter-Club League held at Burn Gliding Club, where a fellow pilot and I took our club's Astir CS-77 to see what we could achieve.
Thursday
The first thing we did was to go down to Burn on the Thursday for some site checks; we know how to fly, but the vast majority (ie, all bar about 3) of my flying has been from the same airfield where the local surroundings are now etched into my brain - making local navigation and planned arrivals into circuits quite routine. Burn has a long, thin tarmac runway which is a complete change to the usual short, wide grass field we operate from usually. I took the opportunity to winch launch their K-21 straight into a good thermal, have a good look around, and then loop it (rude not to). Seeing where you're going to be flying from, from the air is worth doing, as it just gives one less thing to be concerned about on competition day.
Friday
Friday was spent back at Sutton Bank packing the trailer - a list was started, and items were slowly collected and ticked off as they were added to the car, trailer or glider. It would be embarrassing to forget something obvious like a tow rope or parachute, and it would be downright annoying to forget something small - such as an SD card for the logger to store flight data! Thankfully, taking the time over collecting everything seemed to pay off and we wanted for nothing.
Friday was also the first time I'd driven such a huge trailer on the back of my car; but it was fairly trivial - I took the empty trailer out for a quick local drive first and found that it made little difference - I only needed to make slight modifications such as taking a bit of width into corners and ensuring plenty of space was provided when passing trucks on the motorway.
We arrived at the airfield without issue. Tents were pitched and the next day was the first of three planned competition days.
Saturday
Saturday was the agreed day for my fellow pilot to fly the task, we'd decided a month or more previously that he would go first, I would go second, and the third day would go to either the person who didn't get to fly due to weather, or the person that had done the least flying.
The task was set, and for the novices, it was to be Burn - Doncaster Northwest - Wetherby - York - Burn which totalled up to about 100km. It was a hot, blue morning with a 3000' inversion and after briefing, cumulus dotted the sky, but within about thirty minutes, they had disappeared and the sky was featureless again, long before the first launch.
The sniffer was sent aloft and reported back that it was possible to soar, so the task went ahead, despite the lack of thermal markers.
Depending on the way you look at it, it either didn't go well - or it went extremely well. Our aircraft landed out short of the first turning point, and none of the novices completed the task, with DNW being the only one anyone reached (a couple of gliders made it back to the airfield and a couple landed out). Not a successful task, but a good field choice and a safe landing meant that everyone was happy, and the aircraft would fly again on Sunday. As retrieve crew, I also got a free dinner courtesy of the pilot.
Sunday
Sunday was my day and the conditions were much the same as far as I could tell; having not flown the day before - it was impossible to know whether it was any better or worse. The task setters shortened the novice task, providing Burn - Pontefract - Tockwith - Burn which added up to about 71km. We rigged, waited, got the glider ready, waited around a bit more, and eventually I was pulled onto line to take my launch.
As I followed the Aerotow (A Robin, from Pocklington) to the regulation 2000', all I remember thinking was how embarassing it would be if I didn't manage to get away at all. I had a plan that I would go when I'd got 3000' or more, but on a blue day, finding a thermal is as much about luck as it is judgement.
I released at the top of the tow and headed in the direction of two other gliders who were circling nearby, and this is where things became interesting. It turns out, just because gliders are circling, it doesn't mean they are doing so in lift. There was a thermal present, but to my annoyance, it wasn't where they were, but it was too close for me to move out and start circling in the correct place. I stuck with them for a few turns - maintaining about 1800' and hoping they'd find the core, but stubbornly, they didn't move and so I left the area to find my own lift.
Fortunately, I found what I was looking for and found a thermal that would take me just short of 3300' at an average of 1.9kts - at the top, when I looked over my wing I could see at least 4 other gliders circling below; "That's where it is!" I thought to myself, rather smugly.
And so I flew back over the airfield to take a start and then headed straight toward Pontefract and getting there was relatively easy - I flew along the line of the river, downwind of a few towns hoping to catch a bubble of lift, I stopped to take one thermal which averaged 1.7kts and took me back up to above 3,300'. My grand plan aimed to always be around or above 2,500' and so I was happy.
I flew directly over the town into the turn point encountering huge sink, and so didn't hang around. I arrived back into normal air at around 1750' - far below my desired threshold! This was where I had an encounter with JAX, the K-21 from Pocklington. They were in worse trouble, some 400-500' lower than I was, and equally unable to find the lift. I circled in a weak thermal which only gave me about 100' before deciding that I needed to look elsewhere. I lost further height and was down to 1100' - by this time, I'd eyeballed a good selection of fields and felt confident that I had multiple good options if needed.
The Pock Two-Seater continued to struggle below me and eventually started circling. I gambled on the fact that they had found something they thought they could work, and I headed over in their general direction.
The gamble paid off for me and I spent the next 10 minutes in the thermal of the day as far as I was concerned, averaging 2.1kts and taking me back up to 3,300ft whilst drifting downwind toward my next objective. As I circled in the core, I saw a dust plume kick up as I watched the K-21 land in a ploughed field - I silently thanked them for their efforts (and sacrifice) and headed on my way - next stop Tockwith, about 25km away from my present location.
I decided to follow a major road heading north, and I picked up my next thermal off a junction. 600ft at 1.5 kts, and then the next offered 500ft at 1.3 kts. It felt like the day was dying off, the thermal after that was just 1 kt and gave me a measly 100ft.
I was easily in for Tockwith and headed to the turnpoint, but could find no more thermals to keep the task going. 1200 ft again and a landout felt somewhat inevitable this time, so I headed south to an area that looked like it had some good landable areas. I flew over a couple of short crop fields, similar to the ones my buddy had landed in the day before, but I rejected them as I flew over - not sure how tall the crop was and not wanting to take the risk as I saw a huge ploughed field ahead.
I headed over the corner of the field, and the vario indicated the presence of lift - but it was too little too late, the field looked good, so I completed a quick set of checks - no water, wheel down, straps tight and flaps not fitted - I turned a quick 360 to line up and get into wind down the line of the furrows.
Now it was easy... Keep calm, hold the airbrakes closed until clear of the cables running along the road and then pop them half open, plenty of time and landing area, so hold off, hold off, hold off.... until finally the wheel made contact and I pulled the brakes to come to a short stop.
With almost 50 out of 71 kilometres completed on a tough day and first field landing complete, now all I had to do was call the retrieve crew. I unbuckled myself, left the 'chute in the glider, and hopped out. A quick pee to help the plants grow and it was time to go and find the landowner.
As I was walking to toward the road and nearby buildings - he found me.
"I've just planted that", he said. "It took ages".
"Sorry," seemed like an appropriate response. "I had no choice but to land".
We had a short conversation where he asked whether I could navigate, but I assured him that I knew where I was and that hadn't been the issue. He was, justifiably or otherwise, a bit grumpy, but his field had saved my life. I continued to apologise, offered my insurance details and eventually - after instructing me not to have any vehicles go on his land - went about his business.
The crew arrived, and much pushing and pulling later we had the glider up by the road, we de-rigged, packed up, and headed back to the airfield for a well deserved pint - which today, was on me.
Monday
The high pressure stayed around and produced another blue day, a task was set, but at around 2pm, with no soarable conditions, the day was declared a scrub. We took a winch launch each just for the practice (and I need more of that, having not loaded the winch enough, and released at 600ft due to over-speeding) and so as not to waste a freshly rigged glider. At least it was a good opportunity to do a rather stylish landing right up to the trailer at the far end of the runway and save some more pushing and pulling!
After the third de-rig of the weekend, we packed the trailer and sent the glider off to have it's ARC completed before returning to the club - probably wondering why on earth it had spent so much time being put into and out of it's box and where the hell it had been!
And after all that?
You don't actually get to do that much flying in a competition - OK - we were doing short tasks on a difficult day, and had it been better, we might have been completing 100-150km flights - but it's left me eager to do more. I've proved to myself that I can do a 'proper' cross country, it's given me a determination to make it all the way around next time, and it's given me a hunger for more racing. I think I'm going to have to buy myself an aeroplane of my own.....
Watch some Maggot Racing on YouTube (the flights described above were Novice Day 1 & 2).
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