I came, I soar, I went.

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...

Well, it has been a while hasn't it? Between pandemics, parenting, work and every other thing that takes up my time I am afraid I have neglected this blog - and I had always intended to keep it at least somewhat up to date with my gliding adventures. The idea of it was that it was something to reminisce over later, or perhaps it might inspire someone who stumbled across it to take their gliding to another level, or just to take up the sport at all. I currently find myself laid up with a bad back, which my gliding friends attribute (without proof!) to my trailer, however I think it's altogether more likely that it's down to lifting a wriggly toddler into and out of the car. But anyway, since I can't do an awful lot else, it seems like a good opportunity to go through the logbook and see if I can find some interesting things to write about - and get this blog caught up with things. The last flight I wrote about was July 2020, and according to my logbook, that wasn't t...

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...

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 ...

In my last post, I ended with how much I was looking forward to the Inter-club league this year, especially since I'd organised it and it was being hosted at my home airfield. Sadly, it lived up to it's nickname - the 'inter scrub league' and we managed collectively to amass zero kilometres - even despite a mass relocation to a different airfield when we thought local weather conditions might give us something (it didn't). I'm however pleased that the turnout from local clubs was great and showed that there is enthusiasm and willingness to cooperate to put on an event. We'll try again in August. The weather still hasn't settled fully, either that or I'm paying much closer attention to it than in previous years when my goals were first to fly, then to be able soar locally - where of course now all I want to do is go places. So far this year I've done a few short flights; a 100km at the end of March, and then a couple in the 130km range more re...

It's been a while since I posted, it would seem. It hasn't been a particularly busy winter, flying wise - I've managed to do enough to keep current, but Lima-Five-One has been in it's trailer in a nice warm barn, and only came out in March as the weather started to take a turn and the ARC was due. This is obviously the first time I have needed to take an aircraft through it's ARC, but it was relatively painless thanks to the wealth of expertise we have at Yorkshire Gliding Club, not only some hugely experienced pilots, but engineers as well. It's fortunate, because the first thing that happened when we lifted the glider fuselage out of the trailer was that the tail skid dropped off! One expensive new skid and a couple of days work later, and I had a newly airworthy glider for another year - and with another day, we sorted out the instrument fit. Gone is the old LX160 to be replaced by an IGC approved LXNAV S100 for task flying and logging duties, and...

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...

We're lucky to have a modern, high performance club fleet at the YGC - and those of us not yet fortunate enough to have our own glider, or a share in one are spoilt with a choice of either Discus or  DG-303 to go and have an adventure in. As you would correctly imagine, this system doesn't work so well on the good days. I arrived on the airfield at 8:30am intending claim the Discus for later in the day. Normally, nobody is around at that time - but this was going to be a good day (we have a had a few quite recently). To my shock, the hangar doors were already open (and thus, so was the flying list) and to my disappointment, both aircraft had been claimed for cross countries - even the Astir had names next to it.  With one two-seater out of action due to a split tail wheel, and another away at a competition, the very idea of taking the DG-500 and flying it solo was also a non-starter. What to do on a fine Saturday then. Wait in the clubhouse to see whether any o...

Thanks to some Yorkshire wave and a stroke of complete luck with regards to take off time and release point, I smashed Silver height earlier in the year without really having set out to do so, and so my journey to completing my Silver badge in 2018 officially began. (In case you feel that was cheating, I have now also completed a 4000' climb in thermals, we seem to be experiencing a strong summer of high cloud bases, when there are actually clouds!)  Duration came next, and as I explained before - I made it difficult for myself but managed to hang on to a deteriorating ridge just long enough. All that remained was the distance claim - and frankly, this was the one I was most  looking forward to. After over 100 hours of local soaring, I wanted to go and explore - but let's not get ahead of ourselves, I wanted to do it on a day that was sensible. When I first started researching things - Market Weighton seemed like the task to do; 51km away and an option to land at ...

Five hour duration. This is the one I've least been looking forward to. It's not that there's anything wrong with flying a glider for five hours, because after all we fly because it's great fun (and because we're massive children who are fortunate enough to get to play with the best toys). It's just that five hours is a long time and with gliding one poor decision could see you back on the deck at any point; but equally, a series of perfectly executed decisions could do the same if the weather doesn't co-operate for a full flying day (and we are talking about a hill site in Northern England). Since there's a currently a few of us that need to tick this one off in the near future, there have been many conversations in the bar around strategy and we have largely agreed on the principle that the best way to do it would be on a good soaring day and involving a suitably sized cross country task, so as to keep the mind occupied on other things than clock w...