13th June Milk Hill to Kettering (135km) HG
Arrived about 11.00am to find no-one flying, but a few PG's sat around. One other HG there (Craig). By the time we had rigged the wind had dropped and PG's were having a few short flights. Initially the cycles were very short lived and both mine and Craig's first flights were brief and ended with landings in front of the fence.
By about 1.30 the cycles were starting to last a few minutes longer and after getting bored waiting I took off when I saw two PG's starting to climb. Craig followed a few minutes later and we climbed back over the top car park until the thermal broke up. Craig glided forward to get onto the front face, but had to land and walk the last bit. I pushed a little way along the south face and hooked a nice 500ft/min climb to get away. Cloud base was around 5000ft as I crossed the M4, and it was relatively easy to Wantage, but got low at Grove. After a bit of scrabbling got back up to near base and followed a line of cloud to my goal on the outskirts of Oxford. I couldn't bring myself to burn off 3500ft to land and get the guaranteed retrieve, so pushed on North.
OD around Bicester slowed progress, but got pretty good air through the gloom and got back into sunshine east of Silverstone. More cloud at Northampton and a long glide without much lift left me 400ft off the deck and unzipped for landing, but got a low save and climbed out over Pitsford reservoir. eventually landed just past the A14 NW of Kettering.
By about 1.30 the cycles were starting to last a few minutes longer and after getting bored waiting I took off when I saw two PG's starting to climb. Craig followed a few minutes later and we climbed back over the top car park until the thermal broke up. Craig glided forward to get onto the front face, but had to land and walk the last bit. I pushed a little way along the south face and hooked a nice 500ft/min climb to get away. Cloud base was around 5000ft as I crossed the M4, and it was relatively easy to Wantage, but got low at Grove. After a bit of scrabbling got back up to near base and followed a line of cloud to my goal on the outskirts of Oxford. I couldn't bring myself to burn off 3500ft to land and get the guaranteed retrieve, so pushed on North.
OD around Bicester slowed progress, but got pretty good air through the gloom and got back into sunshine east of Silverstone. More cloud at Northampton and a long glide without much lift left me 400ft off the deck and unzipped for landing, but got a low save and climbed out over Pitsford reservoir. eventually landed just past the A14 NW of Kettering.
Craig got away from the front face to fly home to Shrivenham.
Malcolm Beard
