I came, I soar, I went.

Following on from Sunday's excellent soaring day - the weather prospects for the cross country course starting on Monday looked less than perfect. Pretty crap in fact with rain predicted for the entire of Monday, and probable throughout the week thanks to two areas of low pressure pushing bands of rain up the length of the UK. Monday 15th May As predicted, Monday was a washout. People come to a gliding club to go flying and so in that regard, it wasn't the best start to the course. The flip side to that is that people tend to visit a gliding club only on flyable days and that leaves no time for theory work (In this country, if it's flyable, we fly!). So whilst it rained outside and we were missing nothing, we covered topics such as thermalling techniques and field landings, it's always good to hear pilots stories too and some of the instructors had field landing experiences (both good and bad) to share with us. Tuesday 16th May Tuesday began much the same a...

I'm presently at cloudbase, around 3,500' QFE to Sutton Bank which is not more than about a mile away. If you want to find out how I got there, read part one of this post . Now that I had some height, it was time to do something with it - and I had a plan. I read on a website of another gliding club that early solo pilots should set themselves little challenges to ensure that they were always pushing themselves to try new things, and learn new skills. Apparently, the sport of gliding loses quite a few people at this stage - no longer regularly flying with instructors to push them on and not qualified to venture out into the countryside, they get bored and stop flying. I can't go out of gliding range of the airfield, and even if I could, I'm not yet used to quite how far a glider can go given a certain height - I mean, I know the numbers, but I want to get an idea of the reality. I estimated that I could glide at 30:1 accounting for inefficient flying and to make ...

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'...

Sutton Bank provides conditions for pilots of all persuasions; winter offers up more hill soaring and wave conditions, whilst in the summer season the thermals can start popping and providing the method of circling height gain that most people (I assume) typically associate with the sport of gliding. I first started learning to fly just as the 2016 season started and I didn't manage to get along to as many days as I perhaps could have, so consequently during the height of that season, I spent more time practising basic flying skills rather than advanced soaring techniques. As my personal flying ability was improving, the weather was descending into winter and so by the time I was ready to start learning these things the options to do so were far more limited. I have therefore spent the off-season working on the areas of my flying that conditions allowed, including some winching, ridge flying and the odd tricky approach into significant headwind; but no real thermal soaring. I had...

Hello. My name's Chris, and I've been meaning to start up a blog for years now, but it always seems like there's something better to do and as much as I have an opinion on all things, I don't believe that the internet cares about what I think all that much - and nor should it! However, since an early age I've been interested in aviation. I wanted to join the RAF as a jet pilot but never had the qualifications for it, then I wanted to learn to fly powered aircraft but never had the money for it. I had been an air cadet in the 1990's and done some flying in both traditional power and in motor-gliders, and had never given a thought to 'pure' gliding - dismissing it as an 'up, round and down' thing. And then I got a gift of a trial flight at the Yorkshire Gliding Club. I was hooked and joined the club the next year (in 2016). So now I have something to write about that might be interesting to some people! This blog documents some of my adventures ...