Volume 8 No 3 Jun 1957.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

Lasham to Land's Endby A. J. Deane-DrummondATURDAY, 6th April, started well and byS 8.30 small cumulus had 'Sprung to lifeall OVer the sky. The wind was str,ong fromthe north-east and'it was clearly ,going to bean excellent cross-eountry day if it did notcloud over too much.Rather naturally, I had planned manytrips down to Cornwall, but somehow th~plans never seem to fit exactly the conditionsas one finds them. The first problemwas the declaration ofgoal. Should I go forLands End or should I play safer anddeclare one of the airfields beyond Trurwhich are all over 300 kms. from Lasham?The wind was blowing right down thepeninsula at about 20-30 knots, whichmeant that I WQuld need about 5,000 ft.over :Bodmin to make it. Conditions lookedso good and the fascination of getting toLands End made me decide on Lands EndAerodrome. I then marked off the five.mile points back to Bodmin, which is about48 miles from the tip.·Clouds were quite shallow, and so it wasvital that I kept where the thermals weremost likely to be strong, which meantstaying in the middle of the peninsula ratherthan attempting to use the sea breeze effect.If it was essential to pass over Bodmin, jtwas necessary to keep to the north side ofDartmoor, rather than allowing the wind todrift me down irtto the Plymouth area fromwhich it might be difficult to escape. Themost difficult pan of the flight was IjkeJy tobe between Exeter and Bodmin, and so itturned out to 'be.* See article in SAlLPLANE AND GLIDlNG,April 1957, page 92.I was launched by car tow at 10.30 a.m.and soon fOWld a thermal wltich blew meup to cloud base at about 4,000 ft. abovesea level, a mile or two downwind ofLasham. The clouds were now formed inlong streets a few miles apart and I resistedthe temptation to make too full use of them.I had ,to keep on track and only followedeach str~t down until I hit a strong thermal.From cloud base I steered off cross-wind tothe next street and repeated the process. Asa result I covered the first 100 miles in abouttwo hours and was nicely placed a few milesnorth of Exeter for the rest of the trip.Over Exmoor there was rather a lot ofcloud which proved to be still fairly active,and from whjch I extracted the last scrap oflift. As we passed over the highest hill justsouth of Okehampton I cursed when I saw,that the sky in front appeared to be completelyblue. However, as we came closerthere were a few small wisps of cloudsscattered here and there and these all.produced weak thennals. Over Bodminthere was quite a sizable cloud developing,and after a bit of a struggle we managed toget within reach. Sure enough a seriC$ ofstrong thermals pushed us up to nearly5,000 f.t., by which time we had drifted a fewmiles to the south-west. An being well, itshould now be in the bag, and I started tofl.y as accurately as possible towards thegoal. The air was now quite dead, but as Iwas well above the line at the first checkpoint, I inCl'eased airspeed to 40 kn1)ts,which I held for the Test ofthe trip.To my great astonisltment, just pastHayk, I flew into an isolated strong thermalwhich I circled in for a few turns. I alreadyA."'. E.~£- U MONe>!MI'/OGMM \ 6. -'I. s.,.IO?>O /130\\/1.50\\ -/!lSO\\1430-114-