Today the organisers set a 199.6km task:- Wantage – Butser Hill – Duncton – Lasham West – Lasham. The weather forecast appeared to show a warm sector with upper cloud in the west and the possibility of it turning blue later in the day towards the East.
Being near the front of the grid today, and suddenly realising that I hadn’t collected my SD Card for the logger from Control, had me running back to the glider and rushing to get strapped in just in time before they launched.
Cloud base was initially quite low at 2800 above site and rising to 3200. I started at 11:57 but quickly could see that things were not too good out to the west with upper cloud spilling in and less and less sun on the ground. I made it to Greenham Common and called Steve to warn him that a land-out was likely as I searched for more lift.
I managed to tip-toe my way North of track in an attempt to stay with what little sunshine there remained. I approached Harwell in a lowering cloud base, knowing that I must not go into their zone and tried to eek my way around the Western most edge. I had already seen other gliders in fields and there were another four below me struggling. I could see Wantage ahead, but no options for staying airborne, but maybe the possibility of nipping in around the turning point and back towards the lighter grey clouds, and if that failed, I could land in a good cut hay field where there were already three other gliders. I could also see another glider who did not go to the turning point, but opted to try a climb to the East, should I join him? I chose not to and instead to fly gently towards the turning point hoping that there would be some lift over the houses. It was to be the wrong decision. I turned Wantage at 1500 feet and headed back towards the landable field. There were a couple of bubbles of lift, but I found that I could not make them work sufficiently for me to be able to climb, so a land-out it was.
The other three pilots had opted for aerotow retrieves as I waited for Steve and Michael to come and retrieve me by road. We de-rigged the glider as the last of the other pilots had his aerotow out of the field.
On the way home, as it was the only possibility during working hours to do this, we stopped by the bank and collected the cash that we’d ordered for Sweden. We then drove onto Farnborough in order to collect a couple of boxes of items that the company I work for had kindly donated as gifts for the other pilots. So we managed to get a few things sorted on the way back to Lasham.
As for the results, well I’m not at all pleased with my 12th place – I should have done far better as I’m normally very good at scratching in poor conditions, indeed, I’ve won a day at Lasham previously by doing just that. I’m very disappointed with myself. What am I doing wrong? Well I simply think I’m trying too hard to apply all the recent learning and I need to go back to my own intuition.
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