14th June - HG aerial tour of the TVHGC sites, starting from aerotow at Clench common.
First aerotow of the season from Clench Common. All the usual suspects were out, for what looked to be a great day. Provisional plan was to fly to Sparsholt (nr Wantage), then Newbury and back. I got the third tow of the day and released at 1500ft into a weak climb, with Justin and Craig overhead. Justin went exploring and got nothing, while Craig and I stayed with it to close to base. Leaving Justin climbing from low down, we headed north over Malborough where Craig beat me to the next thermal and headed on towards Aldbourne. I tracked north to near Liddington then over Sugar before crossing the M4. Justin caught up and took a wider track over Liddington. We met up again briefly at the Sparsholt turnpoint and turned south again. With a reasonable westerly wind I decided not to go all the way to Newbury, and instead headed east of Kintbury, then on to Combe to pick up what looked to be a good cloud street. Found lots of PG's doing no flying on Combe and no lift under the cloud, so pushed west along the ridge. After taking a couple of weak climbs I eventually squeezed round the north end of Shalbourne gliding club and got a climb from ridge height on Ham hill. From base I glided into wind across the valley to Savernake where I topped up to get back to Clench and arrived with 3500ft. The clouds up the Pusey valley looked inviting, so I pushed on upwind and got the best height of the day at just under 6000ft. I called it a day once I got level with Rybury, and scooted back downwind past the white horse and Golden Ball. A few turns in a thermal east of Golden Ball gave me enough height to get back to Clench safely. The last 4 km were a steady 4 - 500ft/min sink. FAI triangle distance 81.3km.
Justin landed near Shalbourne, having pushed a bit too far south east. Craig was already back at Clench having had a good flight, but struggling low down for a long time north of Hungerford. Others had a hard time getting away due to weak conditions low down.
Malcolm Beard
