| Flight details: | With RASP for Friday looking good further west, and having to end up in Oxfordshire anyway, I camped at Uffington (nice site at Britchcombe Farm) with thoughts of flying the White Horse there, or heading on to Monk's Down in Dorset. But Matt Pepper, Smurf and Tim Pike decided to come and join me at midnight, and persuaded me that Combe was the place to be. Breakfast in Lambourn was followed by a frustrating morning for me at least. The wind was sub-soarable, but at least one or two pilots were high for most of the time, including an old Swing, a skinny grey Icepeak (why do people fly grey gliders), and sometimes Matt, Smurf and Tim. I struggled to get above 50 feet. The overcast moved in, and I unclipped, thinking the day had had it. Suddenly everyone leaped into the air and nine of them climbed out. I clipped back in and got to 50 feet again. And then -- why? I wish I knew -- my next launch into a little bit of wind turned into a smooth and easy climb to 3000 feet.
I was roughtly in the same thermal as a blue Advance and blue-and-white Team 5. Advance man headed back to the hill; Team 5 guy outclimbed me and set off ahead. I drifted on, in buoyant enough air not to charge downwind. It was a flight with a lot to think about; fly the clouds or fly the sky? And are those clouds a bit too dark and lifty? Will a sunny green field be better than a shaded brown one? Join Team 5 or not? Chase those sailplanes? Go due south downwind and be decked by airspace at Andover, or push crosswind to the sunnier east for a chance of a big flight -- but probably be decked on the glide? And how would I get past those complicated bits of airspace anyway? Too much for my poor brain.
Team 5 headed south and sank a bit, I went east and climbed; aha, I thought, I'm clever and you're a mug. I sank, Team 5 got low over brown fields but climbed; oh, I thought, you're clever and I'm the mug. He settled the argument by remaining in the air as I landed in a paddock by a posh house with poo |
