2021 Part 1 - A 200km shakedown flight

This fashionably late post continues the story of my gliding adventures into the 2021 season. 

Everything had been set up for the previous year to be the one in which I entered my first rated gliding competition. Silver badge done, some exposure to inter-club competition, club task weeks and a little bit of other cross country practice meant that the only thing to do would be to get on with it. Unfortunately the pandemic put paid to that, so I would do it in 2021 instead.

We fly year round at Sutton Bank; with ridge and wave opportunities making sure that we have soaring opportunities at any time of year - I think I have said before that we are very lucky. Unfortunately, this weather can't be guaranteed, and being on the top of a hill does mean that we can also be snow and fog bound in the darker months, seemingly for weeks at a time. This is not really the time of year to use days off from work to go flying, so you take your chances that the weekend will throw up something that is flyable. 

My logbook shows that 2020 finished on the 27th December and the next time I had the opportunity to get into a glider was 30th March. We were still under restrictions of who could be near who, and so two short solo flights in a K-21 were the first opportunity to get flying again. There could be no check flights, so those of us with some reasonably recent flying and sufficient qualifications / hours were lucky enough to be able to self-check so that we could prepare for our single seater season.

The first opportunity to get back into my own glider came just over a week later on the 9th of April; and what better way to re-familiarise yourself than with a 200km jaunt around Yorkshire? My comments on the flight from the time say it all. Setting off on task, the first few climbs were rubbish - or was it just me that was rubbish? 

When I get back into my own glider at the start of a season, I try harder because I know that my flying instincts aren't as sharp as they are when I'm flying every week or two. This makes me very conscious of how good my lookout is, how well planned my circuits are, and there's always some extra safety margins - the circuits start higher, and my tolerance for being 'low on the ridge' are several hundred feet higher than when I'm practiced. It helps me to feel safer.

What is objectively worse though is my ability to centre a thermal quickly, and maintain a smooth circle. The only way you can be good at this is practice, and that's in short supply in the early season - so invariably, the first few thermals feel rubbish. Using a flight simulator like Condor in the winter period can be helpful to a certain extent, but nothing can replace the real thing - because a lot of it is to do with the feelings of acceleration and G-Forces that simulators don't replicate. Turning in a circle is easy. Doing it in the right place, at the right speed, amongst potentially turbulent air - that all takes practice.

Nonetheless, that first flight was a success. I got around the task, the handicapped speed was a not terrible 75kph - comparable to other pilots taking off from Sutton Bank. Including mine, 5 flights were logged. Speeds were around 60-80kph and distances 100 to 290km, so I was around average or just above. 

The very next day I landed out at Bagby after 25 minutes; so you win some, you lose some.

There were a few more unremarkable flights after that, and the next one worth talking about happened in early June. I will end this post here as that flight warrants its own post.