Flying High.

In the days leading up to Wednesday 19^th July 06 WeatherJack had been predicting an unusually high cloudbase. I doubted that the predicted 10,000 foot cloudbase would materialize, but it looked like being a good day, so it seemed like a good opportunity to do my cross country diploma part 2, which is a 100km triangle at over 65 kph.

On the day the sky looked good, so I rigged the 18.8 meter Open Cirrus CEA and put the task Mynd – Shelton Water Tower – Leominster – Mynd into the GPS and logger. Several other private owners had plans for cross-country tasks, so we all helped each other get ready.

It was a lovely sunny day with initially very little cloud, though a fairly stiff  easterly breeze. The course were doing circuits, no-one was soaring, so we all waited, helped out at the launch point, chatted about the weather etc.

After lunch the course were still doing circuits. Although the sky looked booming and the cloudbase was obviously very high, no-one was soaring. Eventually I decided to have a go anyway, and launched at 3pm.

We were launching to the north, so the launch was not particularly high. I headed towards the gully hoping for some wind shadow to kick off a thermal. After a little scrabbling I hit a strong thermal and started to climb fast, drifting westward over the ridge. At 3,500 feet above site I broke off the climb, which was still going strong, and flew  south to go across the start line at 3,000 feet and headed for Shrewsbury water tower. There were some good looking clouds over Shrewsbury, I aimed to get there and get a good climb, but immediately started sinking like a stone losing 1000 feet in 3 kilometers.

Every few minutes on I heard someone call downwind to the Mynd, so I guessed that conditions low down were still difficult, and that I needed to stay high. I was hitting a lot of sink and no thermals, so when I got down to 2,000 above site at the north end of the Mynd I took another climb, drifting westward quite rapidly. At 6,000 feet QNH (Above sea level) I broke off the climb as I was drifting too far off track and headed upwind. There was a large cloud over Shrewsbury that looked good, so I headed for it and hit enormous lift. It was a truly monster thermal, but very narrow. As I climbed  through 6,000 feet QNH the clouds above me still looked as high as they do from the ground on a good day.

The memory that will always stay with me from that flight is climbing through 8,000 feet QNH virtually standing the Cirrus on it’s wingtip to stay in the thermal with the vario off the scale, watching the altimeter hand winding up faster than a second hand on a clock. It was better than the thermals over Jaca in February.

At that point I heard yet another downwind call from the Mynd, so partly to be helpful, and partly to annoy anyone still doing circuits, I called ‘Mynd Gliders, Charlie Echo Alpha over Shrewsbury, 10 up going through 7,000 feet above site’

I eventually hit cloudbase at 9,200 feet QNH, and went round the turning point to head down the A49 towards Leominster. I had to rely on the GPS to go round the turning point. Although the visibility was very good, I couldn’t make out the water tower 9,000 feet below.

The view during the glide was stunning as there was very little cloud, I could see all over Midlands, North Wales and over to Birmingham. Despite flying under all the promising looking clouds there was only sink. After 15 minutes I had lost almost 4,000 feet in 24 kilometers, so when I found a weak climb over Church Stretton I gained some height and headed towards a promising cloud over Ludlow that slowly but eventually got me up to 8,500 feet QNH, which was enough to get me round the Leominster turning point and back to the Mynd. I didn’t manage 65 kph as I had to spend so long climbing.

I hung around at low level for a few minutes, but the thermals were weak and difficult. On landing I was amazed to find that not only had no-one else except JS managed to do anything other than a circuit, but that many people had not even flown.

It was a flight I will remember for the rest of my life, climbing in a thermal over Shrewsbury wondering if I was going to need oxygen, the enormous space between the ground below and the clouds above, and the view from 9,000 feet with all the clouds above me, and not a wave bar in sight.