Archive 2008

2008 was a truly dreadful soaring season over most of the UK, one of the worst experienced even by most of us. In the League we don't seem to get the best weather even in the good years, so you can guess how it went for us. We had all of three contest days (only two in Novice class and one in Intermediate). Good consistent flying got a win for Camphill, and Novice Gary Vaughan from Burn put up some good performances.

The first meeting of the year was at Sutton Bank, over the first May weekend. We had one day of rain and two of gloom. At least Mike Armstrong got round the organisers' "fun"(?) task of 75 Km across the moors, although he admitted later that he might have bottled out without the turbo. We all amused ourselves in the simulator- Mike also did the best time round the virtual ridge-run to Carlton and back.

The late May holiday saw us at Pocklington. On the Saturday we flew in damp, murky conditions. Only one Pundit was rash enough to leave the site, drifting downwind for 60 Km or so- not enough to make it a contest day. On the remaining two days the sun shone- and the wind blew, hard enough to make it unsafe for task flying.

In June we pitched up at Dishforth, score so far zero contest days out of six. After the usual murk and non-scoring on the Saturday we finally woke up on Sunday morning to sunshine and high hopes. Task setter Paul Whitehead came up with some reasonable looking tasks ranging from 131 Km for Novices to 204 for Pundits. Unfortunately the first turning point got blanked by sea air and only the pundits and Gary Vaughan made anything of it.

The Rufforth meet in August saw two more marginal contest days. On Saturday the pundits (at least those who turned up to compete) got round their 100 Km triangle, albeit at very modest speeds. The Intermediates did at least score, and Gary Vaughan (did we mention that name before?) was the sole scorer in Novice. Sunday was similar only worse.

With only three contest days out of ten, all of those marginal, we decided to activate the reserve weekend at Pocklington. The combination of strong winds and rain we got there made it three out of twelve.

Final scores were: