What a week

So, how did the national gliding competition go? Simply sensational. We flew seven out of the nine days, notching up four to six hours in the air each day — and most of us didn’t land out even once. Over the nine days we flew 2149km with the longest flight

Truly awesome

Saturday noon: decided not to rig because it looked rubbish — by 4pm cloudbase was 6,000ft with 5kt average thermals and it went on until 6.30pm-ish. Beat myself over the head and swore that whatever happened I would rig and be ready to go on Sunday.

Time and weather

Having spent the last few weeks towing gliders in indifferent weather it's time to turn serious attention to soaring because the National Gliding Championships are heading inexorably my way — yup, I haven't done half enough practice. The glider's

When the met gets it wrong

The wx has been rubbish on my flying days over the last couple of months and last wekend's forecast was grim, but then... Sunday dawned — and quite nicely too, nothing like the 8/8 top cover, 5/8 medium level, heavy showers forecast. So I

Fabulous

Yay — the thermals are back from their winter migration (sans bird flu!). These cold north-easterlies might might be hell to stand around in on the airfield, but with the sun already getting higher and warming the ground, the combination is producing

I can't wait...

Brilliant -- the fields for this year's national gliding championships have just been announced and I've qualified for all those I've entered (Club Class, Standard Class, Overseas, 15-metre and 18-metre, well, I'm high on the reserve list for this last

This weather's pants...

There's no other word that sums it up, really. The sun is rising in the sky, the days are getting longer by the minute and the thermals will be back soon (February is usually the start of the soaring weather), but can we get any decent ridge flying in

Even if yesterday's always better...

I've been waiting for the big one, but so far this year it hasn't come roaring in, at least not at weekends. It's curious how other aviators often assume that when the thermals go south in the autumn, glider pilots go into hibernation. Far from it - autumn