Week 1

Day 4.

Opening the shutters on the room and seeing a bright sunny morning is always a good start on a gliding expedition and being able to see the tops of the mountains confirmed that we should get something out of today

At the briefing we were promised light westerly winds and not much else as the top meteo website was down. So it was make it up as you go along, and we took a guess that it wouldn’t be worth launching until at least 1pm. As there was no sign of activity at one, the lunch break was extended and a decision was taken to give it a go at 2pm

As we towed out on the first launch the air clearly felt like it was doing something, and Richard said that he wanted to stay on tow until the second stage. As we were nearing the second stage the turbulence increased and the tug started to go down(at any other time this wouldn’t be a good thing). We released in front of stage two and started climbing in the rotor thermals which were peaking at 8kts. The transition into the wave was relatively easy, but it appeared that the area of lift was quite small. The climb topped out at 14,500ft and then we started to venture East.

The Duo also launched and they released over the valley and climbed into the wave. Eventually they pushed forward two wave systems into the primary, and also topped out at around 14,000ft. It appeared that the wind at this height had dropped and also veered around to the North East.

As is often the case the people who launched second found the transition into the wave had become impossable as the thermals were stopping well before the laminar layer. So both Malcolm and Derek in the DG and Paul and Colin in the Duo made the most of the rotor thermals over the valley, with the last landing taking place just before sunset.