Bank Holiday Monday

The High over Scandinavia seemed to create havoc with the passing of the warm/cold/warm front in the early hours of Monday morning. Nonetheless, several intrepid pilots rigged and gridded with the intention to go fly x-c.

Two main "tasks" were set - BOB-NOW-GRL-NOS-BOO for the grownups (Z12,T6,949 + 246?) which was around 246km. For the wussies, a.k.a. "oh, this is my first x-c of the season/first time I've flown the glider this year/just going to see if the instruments work" a more manageable BOB-BUC-DID-BOO of 119km was tasked.

Feedback from the crew of the Falke WT which had just done a navex was that there were thermals around but the viz was poor and cloudbase around Didcot was around 1500'. Eeek!
Anyway, 246 acted as the sacrificial lamb and was seen to be furiously thermaling and slowly climbing away, so the rest followed.

732, JDV& 971 elected for the shorter task and set off with good intent. After scrabbling around Brill for a while, 732 headed North for Bicester whilst JDV determindly pushed on towards Buckingham, turned short and landed at Thame. 971, cautiously tiptoed back to Booker. The Booker tug ended up with a grand tour of Oxfordshire, with Bob and Mark retrieving 732 and Z3 from Bicester and then JDV from Thame. Not sure how the other group went on but FUN landed out near Didcot.

Quite a challenging x-c day but lots of fun for everybody who at least had a go!