Good forecasts go bad.
On Thursday there looked to be a weekend of flying coming. Not being able to fly Saturday I paid more attention to the Sunday forecast.
It got steadily worse. Hints of rain. Wind changing direction. All the usual stuff that keeps me in the house at the weekend.
Looked better in the lakes. Especially Sunday morning so pinged Mr Bungay to see if he could be persuaded to do a tandem flight or two if the weather looked ok ish.
Sunday morning came and Lockerbie was clagged in. Obs for Eskdalemuir and Drumalbin were showing relatively strong breeze.So blipped Mr B again. - Hows it looking down there.
It looked a lot better than here so after a bit of faff (airwhere upgrade to dev/v 13) Jumped in the car and headed south.
Blue skies over Carlisle. Pennines looked clear. Lakes... Well there was a lot more cloud on Blencathra than earlier.
After a bit of prodding with our airwhere kit we tried to make a plan. Coast. Clagged in. Jenkins in cloud. Wind South / South West. People on Bewaldeth. 19 MPH on Talgarth.
some heading to Cross fell. After a chat with Chris Little we decided to head towards Cross Fell. Garry Stenhouse was flying there. Then reports of rain at Bewaldeth meant we started to make a move.
It's a bit further than I thought it was but the hills looked good. Cloudbase looked low on Cross Fell so Chris suggested Malmerby Low Scars and then see if we can get back into the bowl at Malmerby High Scars.
As we walked up - Wind was off to the South not the SW we were after. (it had been West in Threkeld) so we took a look at the Low Scar - showed promise but light wind and would be a fly down really.
I was hoping for a couple of tandem flights so we headed south to take a look at the bowl. It was still very light and probably SW. We could see people flying at Cross Fell. (And may have mentioned that to Chris LOL)
It was a bit of a walk to the back of the bowl but we headed up a bit higher to give us as much advantage as we could. Bit more of a breeze on top - not lots but more than down below.
A glider was spotted cruising over to us. GaryS on his new Zeno. Making the crossing from Crossfell and to the aerial and then back to Cross fell without any issues. Feet (almost) always clear of cloud?
Chris took off had a wee boat about and proved it was flyable but not lifty. Cloudbase was probably 150ft above us.
Me and Richard set up. Aiming to get some height where we were then aim for the back of the bowl. That was the plan but as soon as we had launched (which was a good launch) it was obvious to Richard that the air was a bit damper than when we were on the ground.
i say more obvious to Richard as he got the full brunt of it as he was the passenger. I was quite dry behind!
Not the best decision to launch but keeping things nice and smooth we maintained for a few beats then flew down to the low scar. A nice landing (slightly up hill). We could have lobbed off again and got my two flights in but I wanted to have a look at prospective landing spots. While doing so it was a bit more obvious that a big shower was heading our way.
Chris had packed up and was walking down through cloud from the high scar. We had taken off just in time to avoid the "in cloud" launch technique!
After cloudbase went 50ft below us we bundled the glider up and started walking through the drizzle to the car. Things brightened up for a bit and there was much pondering on getting another wee tandem flight in.
It was do-able but the wind had picked up, cloudbase was by then 50ft above us and I decided the walk down would be better than flying the tandem up into cloud.
It was a good day out. Maybe less flying than we'd hoped for but it was good craic, a new site and another successful tandem flight.
I also managed to leave my skydrop vario ON in the bag. It worked really well. confirming when I was going up and down on the twisty road from Malmerby back to Penrith. After a while I had to stop though... beeeeep beepbeep beep blurgh blurgh beeeeeeeep. Started getting on my nerves while driving. Would have been nice to hear the same sequence in the air. (beeps not blurghs) Hopefully soon!
Jamie
