Geoff writes: today turned out not to be a write off. We woke up late, after a late night last night, to see a message from Mick and Martin that the forecast was better and they were going to Clatter. We got up immediately, and met them in Newtown.

The fields at Clatter were covered in the white stuff that farmers put on them, ground up limestone and minerals I think, so we now have very dusty gliders. My radio was flat; Judith’s PTT wasn’t working. But we all launched, and as Judith started climbing out after a few beats – flying brilliantly, leaving us all behind, back on the ridge – my vario started giving the low battery sign. I landed, changed the batteries (during which time Richard Worley arrived) and re-launched. Richard was the next to leave (I don’t know how far he got). It was getting increasingly rough and windy on the hill, but I managed to climb in something and got away. Unfortunately, whilst my initial climb out was good, I managed to lose the thermal, and eventually landed just 7km over the back. Whilst I was climbing out Mick had got blown back and landed by the cars. Martin continued flying, but struggled not to get blown back, and decided to go and land too – at which point he got a good climb, and ended up doing 50km – great flight.

In the meantime, Judith had landed for 23km – and her GPS wasn’t working, so no tracklog.

I tried to get back as fast as possible to the front to fly again, but the wind had picked up a lot, so in the end we just retrieved Martin’s car.

Judith writes: We were in such a rush to get to Newtown that I barely had the chance to look at a forecast. What I did manage to see was that there were potential thunderstorms later in the afternoon, so I mentally prepared for an early day. As we were getting ready the last patches of sunshine disappeared. I figured that the thermals would be significantly weaker in strength due to the wide-spread shading. However, a nice byproduct of the shade was that the clouds were nice and fluffy with no sign of towering going on. Because it was an early day, I got into the air asap. Martin and Mick were first off and maintained on the ridge. I followed them about 3 minutes later, did about 2 beats and then spotted Mick in a thermal in the bowl to the west. It was weak and he left it, but I got into the core and started turning. Martin tried to come in beneath me, but the core had drifted over the trees and I think he was too low to safely turn fully.

It was weak but working and I was aware of the need to make the most of the day before it over-developed, so I stuck with it. Once over 3000 feet the thermal improved and I was getting 1.2m/s. I had put on more layers, but I was freezing. My fingers were like ice. Once I got to 4000′ I could see from some quarry dust that the wind was increasing on the ground, but because my GPS wouldn’t acquire, I had no idea of my drift or the wind direction at altitude.

Funny how you take certain things for granted. Until you have to fly without them, you don’t realise how much you rely on your equipment to give you useful information. Before yesterday I couldn’t have honestly said that I look at this, that and the other on my GPS, because I don’t really do it consciously, but yesterday I suddenly realised exactly what information I get from my GPS and how much more difficult it was flying XC without that info. I couldn’t, for example, work out my ground speed, the wind direction at different altitudes or what the track of the thermal was. I couldn’t see the true wind direction from the clouds either… it was all shade on the ground.

So the first thermal took me to beyond the windmills and past Adfa. I was pleased to get past it, just because I didn’t want to have to wait under the holly bush again when it rained later. I left the thermal at 4400′, still way below cloudbase, because it was snowing slightly. I wasn’t concerned about the clouds around me, there was no rain anywhere in the distance, and there was nothing big around, but I have this notion that it’s just not that clever to sit under a precipitating cloud (call me a wimp if you must). There wasn’t strong lift, in fact the lift was getting weaker, so I picked the next good cloud and went to it. I climbed up to 4000′ again and then tried to get the feeling in my fingers back as I glided to the next fantastic looking cloud.

I can’t stress how text book this cloud was – building, grey under-surface, puffy, etc. I flew right under it and got zilch! The wind seemed strong, so I didn’t fancy my chances to fly upwind again and there wasn’t anything really useful to the side of me so I decided to go on a stupidly optimistic glide to a cloud street ahead. If I had connected with it, I would have gone miles – it stretched as far as I could see. As I was gliding to the initial cloud, and the perspective of the size of it changed, I suddenly got doubts about how big the cloud was and whether it was growing too big. I got some lift and turned in it, but by the time I had hunted for it, I was even lower. Decisiveness is a very good characteristic to have when you fly XC, but I am about as decisive as I am patient, so that slight hesitation made a big difference to the height I arrived near the cloud. I was too low. I searched around a few triggers on a ridge, but then had to admit defeat and land at Meifod.

A lovely young farmer was apparently honoured to be my landing witness and as I was waiting on a bench to see what was happening with retrieves a farmer stopped and offered to drive me to Newtown. Turns out he’s had exactly the same knee ops as I have, under the same surgeon at Gobowen. We had a lovely chat and he owns a hill near Meifod, which he wants us to have a look at as a potential flying site.

Met Mick in Newtown and he was pleased with his flight. We would have bought him a birthday beer if we hadn’t been delayed with retrieves.

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