[home]

13/9/99 - Jim Mallinson, 47.9km from Oliver's

Thank you for your 'Signing off' mail-I feel much less guilty now about telling you about these two lovely midweek XCs!

Monday 13/9/99

TO: Oliver's Castle SU 000 646
LZ: nr. Chievely Services SU 474 716
Duration: c. 2hrs
Glider: Edel Response M
Landing and TO witness: Adrian Thomas.
Distance: 47.9 km.

After three hours at Oliver's under an amazing sky four of us finally got away at 3.30. We got to base at 5200' from where we could see Wales, the Solent and Didcot at the same time. Everyone scattered in different directions and lost each other. I glided downwind to another cloud and realised that the amazing downwind streets we'd been looking at earlier had now switched to crosswind streets-some sort of wave effect, I suppose.

The gap to the next crosswind street, over Marlborough, looked huge so I headed south along the street I was under and then realised that in order to get anywhere I'd have to cross the gap so I headed back north again meeting up with Dave Cox under a nice big cloud.

I went for the glide, full speed through big sink and connected with the next cloud at about 2,500' the other side of Marlborough, meeting up with Adrian T who had climbed up the outside of the cloud to about 6,000'! It was pretty surreal approaching base but being able to see someone over to the side a good 1000' above me!

Dave hung around too long under the previous cloud; it started to decay and he was very low after the glide and landed just after Hungerford. Adrian and I found another couple of weak climbs before landing next to the A34 at 5.30.

Bliss.