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Yorkshire Gliding Club Task Week 2018

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I missed out on last years Task Week by becoming Bronze/Cross Country qualified about three days after it had finished, so I was looking forward to competing in this years 'friendly' competition. I had the week booked off work, I had a glider booked for the full week, and the weather looked as though it might have been a little better than it had last year too. Having sat in on a couple of last years briefings for the tasks, there were often 'smaller' versions for pilots competing with a bronze badge. I joked that I hadn't actually had my paperwork back yet confirming full silver, but no, I would have to compete on an equal footing to everyone else - maybe not even that, since several of them were using self-sustaining gliders, and had the option of an engine if they got into trouble. Task week has a basic scoring system that involves taking distance and speed points from a valid flight uploaded to OLC; and then adding a series of bonuses for other achieveme
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An Almost Diamond Flight

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A Gold distance is defined as a 300km flight either in a straight line, or around up to three declared turn points - I guess you can complete it without returning to your original start point. If you do, you can also claim the Diamond Goal flight, which can be done as a 300km flight on an "out and return" basis or around a closed triangular course. I had therefore figured that on the right day, and since I really always want to get back to where I started (because retrieves are time consuming and/or expensive) I would try to do both in one. With the birth of my first and only child having only occured around two weeks previous, managing to go gliding at all was something of an achievement - but after two weeks stuck indoors essentially on-call 24/7 whilst we all figured out what to do - a bit of a timeout was definitely needed.  Anyway, SkySight provided a good forecast and basically said "Go south and stay inland" - the usual 300km O/R from Sutton Bank is
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First XC's of 2020 - in JULY!

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Well hasn't this year been fun, everyone? It's been a long time since I wrote anything - but that's because it's been a long time since there was anything to write. The weather in February was bad, even for February, and as we were looking forward to getting going again in March/April, along came a global pandemic! Thankfully we had the ability to get flying again as soon as regulations allowed in May, but the lockdown period had enjoyed a searing spring, and we returned to some less than stellar gliding conditions - not only that but we all needed to get some local flying done to get in practice after what was effectively a long winter break. June came and went with no chance to use what few good flying days there were due to annual maintenance on the glider which is normally done in March before serious flying begins and so July was the first opportunity to try and get something out of the year. The first day where me, my airworthy glider, and some good weather were a
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