What a difference a day makes. Saturday: cross-wind; lots of launches (44); not much soaring unless you launched within the “golden” hour (longest flight was Martin H with 1:12). Sunday, by contrast, had a wind aligned with the runway, modest number of launches but lotsa soaring. Over 27 hours flown on Sunday compared with Saturday’s less than 12. Mind, when one flight accounted for 5:32 it’s easy to see how the time racked up. That flight was not someone trying to clock up a silver duration but was Matt D clocking up a 4ookm flight – his first launch from Rivar Hill in his LS8 since joining the club. On the Silver front Andrew P did his 50km (an out and return clocking up just over 100km) in his mini-Nimbus. Finding themselves at Didcot with over 4,000′ Phil M and Martin H (in the Janus) did a straight glide home, stepping the pace up to 100 knots as they passed Hungerford.
With so many folks airborne we were a bit short handed on the ground to sort out a flattened Puchacz main wheel (result of a nose high landing).
With no spare inner tube we had to derig the Puchacz and figure out how to get it to the workshop (the wings of the other Puchacz already occupying the Puchacz trailer) but the few folks on the ground rallied round Alan P’s and Richard D’s lead and solved the problem. We then got back to flying the two members still waiting to fly which seemed to be fraught with launch delays
Returning gliders cluttering the airfield
Just as we were completing packing things away a glider from elsewhere made its approach to land and had us trying to figure out what type of a glider it was. Turned out to be an Eagle which was part of Competition Enterprise being held at North Hill. Task of the day was to fly to as many gliding clubs as possible. Having informed their retrieve crew that giving them our postcode would be of no help it was agreed that it would be easier for their crew to find the plough – estimated arrival time for the retrieve crew was 2 pints.
A rare bird indeed
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