The BBC said showers

By 1000 it looked quite good so I thought it would be worth a punt before the showers got going.

Arriving at the airfield much later AJ's parking space was empty so he'd obviously felt it was worth doing something. JFK was ready to tow out and that was it from a cross country perspective.

Julian and Glen were looking after the members requiring instruction with a K13 and a K21 and a Junior was parked waiting for a customer.

I'd decided to try a double shuffle Marlborough-Thame Church-Membury and back to Booker. This gave the option of calling it day if the showers got going strongly which was on the cards.

A launch straight into a cracking climb and up to the bottom of the airspace 4000 and a start.

AJ then asked my task and said he was trying Membury-Northampton South.

A cloud street lay ahead and gave a great run towards Welford which just before I reached the A34 AJ came steaming over the top of me. A climb and change to another street and it was looking good to keep going towards Marlborough.

At that point AJ said it was raining on him, which was strange as I couldn't see any sign of rain from my vantage point. Another good climb south of Membury and the clouds ahead looked as though they were going to let go of rain at any time.

AJ then said he'd landed out. (started his engine) so that was it for him.

Pushing on along the street which ran to the south of Marlborough I was eventually able to turn Marlborough in sector but quite a long way south and past the turn. It seemed silly to leave the comfort of the street I was in.

The sky suddenly started to look really well organized and the threatening cumulus seem to turn into well behaved clouds.

On the way to Thame Z12 asked about conditions and was taking a launch. After rounding Thame and again running into wind under superb streets it was a joy to be in the air. Then Jim said he wasn't achieving very good glides "How was I finding it" I had to say that the streets were being very kind to me.

The rest of the flight was in a similar vein and most enjoyable.

After downloading the flight onto my computer I was amazed to find that the glide angle achieved for the whole task was 76.2.

That's how good the lift under the streets was.

Hope we can have as much fun tomorrow.