Steve Pym flying at Corndon.Geoff writes: well, we almost got it right today, two out of three – right site, managed to get up and away – just didn’t get that second thermal.

We set the alarm this morning, to wake up early and make a decision about where to go. A couple of hours later, we finally managed to decide between the Malverns, Penycloddiau, Pandy, Moel Berfedd, and Corndon. No wonder it takes so long to decide where to go…

In the end, having spent hours gazing at synoptic charts, looking at web sites, listening to the BBC weather, and phoning people around the country, we decided on Corndon, just down the road.  It’s a great XC site, but not the easiest site there is.

We turned up relatively early, for us, at around 11am. Some people were trying to fly, doing short hops, but not getting any great height; so we set up, and chatted a bit to various people who had decided to relocate from the Malverns to Corndon, hoping it would be less windy here, and a better direction.

Eventually, about 12.15, I launched. No-one was in the air then, but I started to climb, and was quickly followed by Kirsty Cameron, Chris and Judith. The climb was quite good, and the drift was relatively fast, and I was quickly committed to going over the back. Judith climbed up to me, and left with me, Kirsty and Chris went back to the front; as we were climbing out, I saw them back at ridge height, and was thinking maybe they’d made a mistake – just shows how wrong you can be! Judith and I drifted slowly back, getting at max 800′ ATO, which we finally lost. Went on a glide to the Harry Tuffin’s supermarket, which should have been kicking off a thermal, but didn’t. We landed in adjacent fields. After we landed, we saw Kirsty, who had climbed out again and this time gone over the back. She was heading to the exact spot over Tuffin’s where we had gone, but she found our thermal, and carried on, for about 18k. We weren’t jealous at all!

As we were walking back to the road, we saw another gaggle of five gliders: Wayne, Martin Knight, Chris, Steve Newcomb and Pete Cook. They were circling in zeros, working well together, and gradually drifted off into the distance… we managed to blag a ride back up to launch from Michaela, expecting to fly again, but it was strong as we arrived, and just got stronger – though the sky was getting far better. Malcolm and Steve Pym did launch, and did get away – probably for a long way, given the really nicely spaced cumulus, and the good drift. And we never did fly again – the wind just picked up too much!

Wayne did around 20k, Chris did 45k (excellent), Martin around 30k, Steve about 18, landing near Kirsty. Not sure about anyone else.

Oh well, at least we got away, and we did make a good site decision (though laziness, not wanting to drive long distances, might have had some influence on that!). So, not a disaster, but we could have done far better. What was our mistake? There’s always a mistake somewhere, if you land when the day is still cooking. Maybe we left slightly too early, but we were getting up in a reasonable thermal, and, for me at least, I was probably too far back anyway to get back to the front. But also, we were anxious to leave as soon as we could because the forecast was for the wind to get stronger, so it seemed to be a good idea to go when we did – and, leaving early, is often a good decision. The thermal we climbed out in did get broken up, but we drifted with it a bit, but then lost it and went to look for another, and that was probably the key mistake – we lost the thermal, rather than it petering out completely, and we should have made more of an effort to stay in it, or relocate it when we lost it.

Anyway, many congratulations to all the other pilots who did go further than us (actually, that’s everyone who went XC from Corndon today)!

Note added Monday morning: when we drove home last night we could see police cars, ambulances and what looked like a crashed sailplane on the Mynd – clearly there had been an accident. Unfortunately, we discovered this morning that the worst has happened, and that there was a fatality. Our sincere condolences go to the pilot’s family and to all his colleagues at the Midland Gliding Club.

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