A sunny day in lockerbie but lots of cloud development early on meant I ruled out any flying. Instead it was off to Southerness to take a picture of the lighthouse for a P1 class project. On the way back I got a text from Dave.
Jamie. Possible tandem weather this evening at dungavel. Fancy an hour or two if forecast happens?
Huge clouds over Dumfries so I got back and said I'd check things out when I got home but first some more chores. I didn't really think there was much of a chance so was in no hurry.
Got home. Checked the computer. there was a hint of a chance. Looking at the rainfall obs on the met office it looked like things might track south of Dungavel so we made a plan to head for the hill for 6 (I was aiming for 6.30 as Dave can be a tad late at times!)
Mentioned to Stephen that I was heading out and he thought he might come along and see what was going on. I think he also mentioned the hail stones at his house earlier.
The thunder in lockerbie was also a tad off putting...
Left lockerbie at 6 or there abouts. Stephen wasn't too convinced even after I'd shown him the met office rainfall obs.. In part because it was pissing it down. The road north was pretty poor too but things were starting to improve as we got further north. Still lots of big clouds but there were blue bits in between the towering cumulonimbus clouds.
Woke Dave up when we arrived. We then chatted, faffed and tried to put a walk up the hill off for as long as we could. After an hour of this there were still some big clouds to the north and south but pretty clear out front and the big clouds over the back seemed to be getting further away. So off we went. Stephen with his Mojo. Me and Dave with the Tandem.
The new BHPA tandem rules require you to do a minimum of 10 tandem flights a year so we are buddying up to get some air time. My turn as pilot so we used my tandem.
Still quite strong on the hill so we waited a bit more. and a bit more. Stephen started setting up and I got the tandem ready. things were calming down. the gusts were less often and not as strong. I was getting ready for the evening to die back to nothing.
Stephen took off just as a gust came through. Nicely controlled launch and he was off and up. Looked pretty smooth and gained a reasonable amount of height while not getting too close to the hill in case it was a tad strong.
Still dropping slightly so we set up with the tandem. Nice launch. A bit of ground handling then RunRunRun and we were off. Maintained for a couple of beats but couldn't quite get any height while Stephen boated about above us.
As we were soaring slowly down the hill we made a break for it and landed down the bottom. Managed to get to the side of Dave on the landing and maybe 2 steps and we were down and stopped safe. :-)
Stephen boated about for a bit longer then came down to land.
A nice evening to get out and about and some flying too
Jamie
