Great vis, good XC day

Well the forecast has been broadcasting this as being “a day” for at least 5 days previously so it was no surprise to see Mike T and Dave “Buzz” Hope at the club. John Clarke would have been among us if he hadn’t been rostered in to do the tugging duties (thanks John but I’m sure you’ll get more than your fair share of XC’s during the rest of the year).

So mike T set a 300km task of TAL-Newtown-Brecon SW- Halfway House (between Welshpool and Shrewsbury- return to TAL.

I set off almost immediately from tow and encountered varying success and solidity of thermal with cloud base at around 3.5k amsl.

As the day went on it generally got better and better, with cloudbase at 6000ft in the Beacons, but generally 5000ft amsl. However, there were often some very large gaps between clusters of large cu’s so long glides resulted.

So the technique adopted was get high and glide to the next one and work your socks off to get high again because to continue to glide into the blue at low level would probably end your day. Remember we were flying over high ground for most of the flight so although the altimeter was reading say 3500ft we actually only had 2500ft to play with.

Dave Hope, in his Ventus Jet started some way behind me but by the time we got to the last turn point he’d caught me and with a quick “hi” was off on the final return leg never to be seen again until de-rigging time! Wow that glider looks so nice in the air.

Mike T had abandoned the task some time before and went off on a jolly West to Castell Cerrig Cennen (Llandeilo) to test out a new “Flarm” receiver aerial he’s put up on his chimney back at home – apparently it works!

Others out were Mike E and Tony Bartlett in their SHK, Richard Robins, some visitors I didn’t get the name of and Student Ben continuing his training with Gerry who was in charge of the day.

Thermals were still powering away at 6pm so me and Mike T cruised around in the brilliant viz admiring the wonderful scenery before reluctantly calling it a day and landing – ahhhhh

Great day

Martin Pingel