Sunday 4th September

I did get accused of bringing Wednesday’s westerly’s to a Sunday.  At least I didn’t bring the rain as Richard had done the day before.  Arrived at the club to 8/8 cloud cover (the early birds said it had been raining when they arrived) which looked to be quite low. Faced with a lively cross-wind and a low cloud base what did we decide to do?  Why, pull the toys out of course.  By the time we were ready to launch the sky was lighter (but still 8/8ths) I did a weather check and at 1,400′ was well clear of cloud base.  The plan to test for turbulence over the trees on approach were scuppered as I ran into relentless sink near the high key point and landed reciprocal.  The sink hole over our landlords farm resulted in a few other reciprocal landing during the day. First off was Nick who found a bit of weak lift which kept us at the same height for about 4 turns resulting in a 7 minute flight.  That stood as the flight time to beat for about 3 and a half hours before Selvam clocked up a record breaking 8 minutes.  Half an hour later John D assertively took the crown with an unbeatable 11 minute flight. Hardly good flying conditions but we made a good day out of it with the 3 pre-solo folks improving their skills and each getting 4 launches.  Graham made the most of the day on the ground setting up our own FLARM receiving station which will feed into the Open Glider Network.