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Easter 2007
Easter Saturday – Junior
Day was nice and warm with a light wind down the strip. A few privately owned gliders were already rigged giving a promise of a potentially good day. Early flights were mainly check flights and the Falk headed off on a Navex.
Tony Walker had launched in his Vega and stayed up. The CFI offered me the Junior and not one to disagree with the CFI I jumped in it. Got a good launch to 1100ft, Paul Ridgell’s first of the day. Went right over the hangers and got 0.5kt, thought that there must be better that that around but stuck with it to give me some early height. With 1400ft on the clock searched around and found 2+kts, just in time for the T21 launch with JB and DM on board. Surprisingly they choose to ignore my established thermal, which continued to take me to 3500ft. No sign of Tony in his Vega although he did say he was 500ft above me at 1220 precisely (thermal police). Is it a convention within the UK to thermal left within 5km of base airfield? Hopefully this point will generate hours of discussion! At this time Brian Palmer was below me in the Cirrus but not climbing at the same rate.
I pushed North and West with the aim of reaching cloud base. I was not ideally prepared being without a hat in the strong sun. However it was very cool under the clouds. Moving up towards Peterborough I got nearer to cloud base, which was 5000ft and rising slowly. Was briefly joined once again by the thermal police Vega checking on my circling technique. With plenty of good lift around it seemed a shame to leave it all. Returning from the North, Upwood was totally covered by the black shadow from a thermal cloud. I got 1 hour and 19 mins of enjoyable local soaring with a max height of 4800ft. At £21.04 I thought this was excellent value, private owners may disagree.
Andy Souter
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