Sunday 2 June 2024
A very good and busy day.
Lots of training launches kept Neill continuously busy and the ground team on their toes. We had 43 launches and managed an aerotow amongst the winching. We had some decent cross country and soaring flights on what turned into a blueish day, with Greg and Humza doing a 300km flight to the far side of the Isle of Weight and back! More below! Thanks to Neil, Klemens, Tony D, David F and all the other ground pounders for the hard work today.
Greg and Humza have written a short outline of their flight which you can read below!
Going to St Catherine’s Point on the Isle of Wight has always been a bucket list turn point; a few days before, we could see from the forecast that this might be possible and so suggested giving it a go on Saturday.
The flight down South wasn’t too bad - a bit bluer than we would have liked and occasionally difficult to centre thermals. The closer we got to Portsmouth, the better it got; finally getting to just under 5,000 ft at the crossing and greeted to amazing views of the harbour and the Royal Navy aircraft carrier.
Things started to fall apart a bit on the island and after turning SCP, we had to scratch around, managing to get a climb up to safely cross back.
Heading back North, we were faced with a completely blue sky - after initially resigning ourselves to potentially not making it home, we were greeted with good thermals gone 5pm, and ended up arriving back at Halton easily.
It was a really great day out, really rewarding and one both of us will not soon forget.
