Aboyne Trip September 2008

by David Pye

Thursday morning was frosty and blue. Elaine pulled on her 4th layer even wearing 2 hats! We gassed the Puch & Junior just in case and then waited till around 11am when it became thermic. Most of us flew, Malcolm took Elaine up in the Puch, Carpo flew his ex-discus, Bob & Tudur went site visiting in the Dimona and managed to get to Feshiebridge GC and Alex flew the Junior. I crewed (& typed). There was little if any wave and it was only moderately thermal to around 3500'. (photos will follow later)

A general view up the Dee valley incl. a Junior & the club on the RHS

Wednesday promised wet & windy weather and then delivered exactly that. After lunchtime, we left the airfield & went to the retreat for old & wise glider pilots, in the mountains, to lie around in the Jacuzzi & sweat in the steam room whilst telling tales of great flights. This was followed by a friendly snooker competition (yeah, who am I kidding!) with the quote of the day coming from Mr Malcolm Hustler every time he took his shot - 'Put off, I was bl--dy put off'. A fun afternoon was followed by supper in a hotel restaurant in Ballater and a late fireside chat back in our hotel.

"We have missile lock!!!"

Tuesday morning really didn’t look very promising at 8am. But by 10am, it was waving once again and at many different levels. By 11am, radio calls were coming in from a/c above 10,000’ and opening the box (FL195-240) was being mentioned.

A view of the upper wave system (above 10,000')

Tudur flew Discus 735, Tim hopped in his DG, Peter flew a club Puch & I flew HCW the club Junior. At the start of the week I was a little disappointed that the Discus & ASW19 had been booked for the week, but now I knew that the Junior was fine for wave flying with one ‘gotcha’, when pressing forward between bars, the low penetration costs a lot of height if in serious sink, as associated with the down side of the wave. One little dip of about 2km, under a thin, see through wave bar, cost 2500’

My tow was unusual, especially for us Kent guys. The tuggie explored several likely looking bars of cloud around 4500’ but there was only sink. I chatted to the tug pilot saying I would hang on until either I felt a sustained area of strong lift or he waved me off, just in case I missed something. Passing 6000’, yep still on tow, I called up the tug and said I would come off tow at 6500’ regardless. He apologised for not being able to find any significant lift, despite touring the highlands and I was fine about this. As it happened, it was difficult to contact any lift below 5 or 6 thousand. I pressed SW and contacted a ½ to 1 knot near Loch Muick and patiently struggled from 5300’ to around 8000’. I then worked my way back towards the club before setting off NW towards a promising bar. I arrived at 7600’ and climbed to 9700’ on this one before it topped out. More searching around for something higher and then at 8300’ I found a thin small patch of wispy cloud that I hoped would develop. I altered course to glide past the upwind edge of it and hey presto, another climb to 10,500’. Once at the top of this, I pushed forward ducking under a thin wispy bar and pulled up into 1 – 2 kts which took me to the max. of 14,009. Trace available here

The view from 14,000'

WOW, this was almost unbelievable, sat on top of the highest cloud in the area and looking around the sky to see only blue for about 50 miles. I knew I couldn't get my Gold height and so just enjoyed flying around (and shivering) for a short while before descending to 7500’ back towards the Dee valley and then letting down to 4000’ near Loch Kinord. I let down further to 1400’ and began a very bumpy and turbulent circuit. A final turn at 1100’, hold the runway line with full concentration and roll to the end of the runway for a successful flight.

Name the Dr Who character competition

Later in the club house, I downloaded and checked Tudur & Tim’s flights, to confirm they had managed Gold heights in a very different & later sky, using thermal & wave to get to around 11,000’.

Pete had taken 4 flights as P1 in the 2-seater but been unable to contact anything between 3000 & 4000 from aerotow despite trying hard.

Well done guys, beers all round followed before leaving the club around 7pm, all very happy.

A beautiful 7/8ths scale privately built & owned Spitfire

Previously -

The journey North was punctured by traffic hold ups. The first near RAF Wittering caused a smile and a lesson was learnt in not following SatNavs too closely. We spotted a detour around an 11 mile jam but the TomTom guided us back to the A1 without any warning or instructions to stick to the diversion. We ended up on the A1 only 1 mile after leaving it :-(

On Saturday, we made our way into the highlands and met Shirley & Barbara for lunch.

Sunday morning started with the weekly visitor's briefing and was followed by a long wait for my site check & familiarization. I flew with Aboyne CFI, Mike Law and was cleared to fly all their club a/c.

We all got together to enjoy an evening meal and later it was time for the nightime cabaret at the Loch Kinord hotel. At 1.15am, the fire alarm went off & continued to do so for over half an hour, causing the guests to stand outside & gradually freeze to death.

Monday morning looked quite good with lots of different levels of wave cloud all over the sky.

Carpo took Colin for a trip in the Puchacz, Malcolm flew his Discus, 735, the Dimona was in great demand and I took the club Junior. I noticed that Peter always seemed to be above me regardless of my climb rate. The Dimona shared the lift and we all chatted merrily on the radio. I was over the moon at finding 7kts out to the West of one bar and there were other small patches where the average climb jumped from 2kts to 4 or 5 and required a little light thermalling turns to stay in these stronger areas. This was fine as the wind wasn't too strong at 19kts and the bars we were working were well out to the West of the airfield, away from the nearest airspace. Later in the club house we discussed our climbs:

Malcolm (735) 10,300'

Dave Pye (HCW) 8,900'

Peter (FYL) 8,300'

Aboyne webcam available here

Quotes
If you think our runway's too narrow, you're wrong, the contact patch on your wheel is only an inch wide and our runways are 100 times wider!

Dimona conversation while cruising a little below & behind Malcolm in the Discus - "Open the throttle and see if we catch him up" P2 thinks, hmmm, of course we'll catch him up, he has'n got an engine :-)

Interclub League 2008 SE Region - (Updated 26 Aug)

After the final two damp weekends, Challock finished in first place and represented the SE region in the final at Lasham over the weekend 30/31st of August. We came 3rd out of (I think) 8 regions.

Dave Pye (team captain).

Duty Rotas - Accessible via the link (lower LHS).

Weather cam 16 Jul 07 - Realtime images now available here (new page, still under test!)

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