Today the Task Setter set a small 103km triangle (Ilsley – Hurstborne Tarrant – Lasham). It was small because of the strong 20 – 25kt North-Easterly wind and also because the thermals had been predicted to be around 2kts.
I launched with another rough tow as the curl over from the trees at Lasham hits you when taking off to the East. It took me a little while to get to 3000ft and then I lost the extra 1000ft I gained form the tow, so in an attempt to stay airborne, I decided to try downwind. Slowly I climbed back up to 3000ft just as the gate opened; I didn’t want to be in this position as I really wanted to leave as soon as the start was declared open. I pushed further upwind towards a huge gaggle of gliders, but found a really good 3knt climb before I reached them; this took me up to 4000ft in the start zone, so I promptly started.
I headed towards Basingstoke and bounced the next thermal, in fact I didn’t climb until I almost reached Newbury. There were several gliders ahead of me and I could see that the sky had changed and it didn’t look good; I needed to climb as much as possible. I watched as 3 or 4 gliders headed upwind towards Reading, but I couldn’t understand to what climb they were heading. So instead I turned in a more Westerly direction towards Newbury and took a slow climb with another glider under a dark cloud base. Steve called me on the radio and suggested I listened to 130.40 as it ‘was interesting’, which I did and all I could hear were pilots struggling in the Newbury area.
I pushed further towards the turning point at Ilsley and as I did so, I could now see gliders littering the fields. I was down to 1000ft and I was taking a closer look at the parking field for the Newbury Showground as a possible landing area. I searched for lift and purposefully drifted slightly West in order to join a couple of gliders above me. I was now down to 800ft but there was something. The bubble increased and I slowly climbed to 2000ft, but I was now back over the motorway.
I pushed North yet again getting lower and lower. I trickled past the fields I had been eyeing up towards another glider in a field, but the field looked as though it may have crop in it, I wasn’t sure, so whilst heading towards him, I also kept an eye open on other suitable fields; there weren’t many. I could now see from my downwind circuit pattern, that the field that the other glider in was ‘set-aside’ and I had just enough height to conduct an abbreviated circuit and land. The other pilot in the field was also from Lasham (Shaun Lapworth in his JS1), but he was flying in the other class.
We had landed on the edge of a village called World’s End – very appropriate. We found the farmer to be extremely friendly and complied with his wishes to shut the gate after we’d gone. Shaun and I walked down the lane towards the main road and before we got there, his crew arrived. I continued on and it wasn’t long before Steve arrived with the trailer. We de-rigged promptly and headed off back to Lasham, not sure if it would be a contest day.
It turned out that it was a contest day and even though I was 3nm from the first turning point, I had come 6th for the day.
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