JUNE

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4 - 7th June   BPCup (Dalesbridge)

After a short, late May heatwave, 'Flaming June'  began with extremely turbulent weather, strong winds and rain!  That played havoc with the BPC and seems set to continue for a while yet.

Registration was  delayed until the Friday morning, with hopes pinned on a short flying window after 4pm. After this time the wind was forecast to drop and some sunshine break through. It seemed optimistic, but actually worked out pretty much to plan. Being a SW wind the obvious and only taskable place became Windbank.

I drove over at 2pm, an hour in advance,  to scout out and provide a sitrep. The sun appeared on the walk up, the sky looked good,  but the wind was strong.  On take off it was too fresh, but the hope was that by 4pm it would be just maybe OK ... it was in the lap of the wind God's. I lay around for a lonely hour, checking and sure enough the wind was dropping, then the comp appeared at 3.15pm.  Another laying around and chatting session until Sean said (as last year on Barkin) ..."Do you think it's flyable?"  A quick check. Wow!  It is ... about spot on. Andy B acted as wind dummy and proved it to be very bouyant, even way out in the valley - very pleasant indeed. So all the gliders came out of bags and the task was set - basically a bit of a Cat's Cradle along the ridge and back ... several times. A task I was really looking forward to and I was in race mode (rare for me)

Window open: 4.40pm and I was about first in the air. It was lovely, lots of smooth lift and decent thermals to 1000' ato. I mulled around waiting for the task to open - which seemed ages as the minutes ticked down. My concern was the wind dropping even further and moving off to the south - it didn't  actually happened.

Task started: 4.55pm. I triggered the exit within 3 seconds of start and at height and set off. A few gliders were higher, some ahead, but a lot lower.  As the terrain changes  towards Arnciffe I always find it works best to get high and stay high.   Tagging the TP1 cylinder was easy and I set off back.  Some of the lower gliders were struggling on the front ridge. At this point the first hint of rain came ... just very light mizzle, but I was on my way back towards take off which was still in sun and dry. Behind me some radio concern was being expressed  as the rain became a bit more than mizzle. A few radio transmissions and the task was stopped with a call to land safely and asap. About six landed near Arncliffe whilst the rest flew south.

Arriving over the end of the ridge, above the landing field and preparing to land I was surprised to find a really nice, gentle thermal and with almost zero drift. Too nice to ignore I climbed back high then wafted off towards Kilnsey before flying back to land in very little wind.

The disappointment was not getting a task in ... we came close - on the positive side the flying was lovely and I enjoyed a good hour and ten minutes.  The next day, Saturday was canned and with Sunday looking worse - too windy, the comp ended.  But ... we got in a Friday evening BBQ and I enjoyed a great illustrated talk on flying in Thailand - which seems my kind of place.

We now move on to Parlick and hopes of better flying weather.

VIDEO STILLS  ( there is a finger smudge unfortunately - it's not the shower)