It’s Saturday 21 May and Steve has busily been fitting the new vario system in the glider during the week following the debacle of the other one last week. The forecast looked good for a reasonable soaring flight and the day shaped up to be promising. I checked the NOTAMS (notice to airmen – in other words prohibited airspace for the day), checked the weather again and planned a relatively short task of just over 163km for the cross country pilots to fly from the Club – Sandhill Farm, Hungerford North, Winslow, Didcot and back to Sandhill Farm. I marked my map and prepared myself and the glider to launch.
Once airborne, there were reliable thermals of 3 knots to 3000 feet. I went through the start line and then decided to restart because one of the other club members (Peter Berridge) had just started, so that we could share thermal and weather information. The weather was cracking and clearly I had under-set the task, but that didn’t matter as the intention was for others to achieve a set task at a reasonable speed and all I needed was the practise plus a chance to see if the new instrument was working OK. The great news was that the vario system was working perfectly! Some of the alarm settings needed to be re-checked and set to our personal preferences, and I noted that the FLARM lights were lighting up when a glider with FLARM fitted was in my vicinity, although there was no audio. I rounded Hungerford (junction on the M4) and set off to the North. I picked up the end of a cloud street and romped Northwards, never quite catching up with Peter in his Discus until after I rounded Winslow. Once round Winslow, I had another fantastic run down the same cloud street to Didcot. At Didcot, it was like bees around a beehive, there were loads of gliders! I had to take a different route at one point between two gliders in a direction that didn’t take me below the thermal I was heading for and this left me with a final climb that I needed to be able to final glide back to site. I found a 5 knot thermal and climbed to the required height, flew across the finish line comfortably and then climbed away again whilst I waited for the next launch to take place and clear the landing area. The weather remained good and Steve hopped in and flew the Mosquito around the Club’s standard 100km task – Sandhill Farm, Oxford and Chieveley. It was a really good day! Peter eventually arrived backed and thanked me for setting the perfect task, which was really nice. But best of all….the new instrumentation was working perfectly. By the way, I completed my task at just over 86kph, which wasn’t too bad!
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