The gliding weather in England has been generally fairly poor in 1998, so far. February was a better month than usual, which gave me an early chance to practice a couple of cloud climbs in snow showers up to about 5000 feet, but March, April, May, and now June seem to have been much wetter than average, and if it hasn't been raining there has been a hot blue sky for a couple of days, with an impenetrable inversion.
Frustrated by the poor soaring conditions, I have tried to get the best out of any soaring posibilities there have been, and with this in mind I winch launched from Wormingford into a showery, 10-15 knots westerly airstream at about 10:45 GMT on Sunday 28th June 1998. Reports of strong lift had reached me, but I couldn't find anything much stronger than about 2 or 3 knots for about 40 minutes, and as I jumped a large gap upwind to the next cumulus towards the airfield I was down again to launch height and thinking I might have to land. However, I managed to sneak out northwards beyond Assington TV mast, and across the airspace boundary where the 4500' Altitude limit over our airfield rises to Flight Level 135. I had a GPS and the general drift was taking me away from the lower limit. When the lift at cloudbase (3500 feet) stayed steady at 4 knots I thought it was worth a sniff inside, so put out a radio call on 130.4 MHz and went in. The lift inside the cloud was fairly steady but nothing particularly exciting, so I stayed with it for about 1500 feet, and then lost it. I flew out the north side and noticed a much bigger cloud a little way to the west, and it seemed to have a darker base when I arrived there below cloudbase a short while later. The lift under this was equally strong, but much smoother, and seemed to be wider, so I set myself up again, put out another call, and went in.
Once inside the cloud, the lift steadily increased, until I again lost track of it and emerged out of the side of the cloud, then losing about 1000 feet in strong sink (you can see this on the trace below). I had been monitoring 130.4 and judged nobody else was inside the cloud, so I aimed straight back in at the tallest part, as far as I could tell, and it was with disbelief that I saw the lift increase and eventually peak at 12.5 knots on the averager, particularly as I had not even been quite sure that the device would display 10 knots and more. The lift was fairly smooth, though there was some slight turbulence near what I supposed was the edge of the cloud. I simply tried to fly away from the turbulence, and as this often seemed to be opposite to the direction of the strongest lift, I made good progress in a generally upwards direction. I had managed in previous cloud climbs in this glider (a Sport Vega) to discover that the best technique for controlling the speed seemed to be to simply take off bank if the speed increased, and to add it if it decreased, and let the trimmer do the work. A Vega is a very slippery craft, and speed control in absolutely zero visibility is a black art rather than a science, especially without an artificial horizon, on just the ASI and Turn & Slip. Nevertheless I managed to keep the speed generally between 50 and 60 knots, with just the occasional mild stall, and one or two excursions up to 75 knots, reaching for the brake lever.
The really nice thing about the Sport Vega is the powerful trailing edge airbrakes which are supposed to be speed-limiting in a vertical dive, and, as I had tried this in clear air I knew it to be true at least up to about 70 degrees of dive angle, at which with me inside it picks up to about 95 knots with full brake. This gives a nice secure feeling, so that if you did lose it completely you could simply extend full brake whilst getting the turn needle back into the middle, or, in the event of this not being possible, or instrument failure, you could simply wait until you fall out of the base of the cloud into clear air, and with added luck you might be the right way up. Needless to say, if you fly in areas where the clouds are stuffed with mountains, more discretion would be required, but East Anglia is practically flat, on an aeronautical scale.
So, there I was going up at 12.5 knots, fast enough for the Winter barograph trace to lean slightly backwards even at 35% scale deflection of the stylus. Freezing level was 8000 feet, and as this was passed, ice began to build up in little clumps on the leading edges of the wings, and the canopy completely misted over on the inside, but did not freeze. The controls gradually became stiffer to operate as the climb went on, and above 10,500 feet the lift began to decrease to about 4 knots, though I think I probably lost concentration on staying in it whilst concerning myself with the loss of aileron feel, though the brakes had not frozen, and pitch control was normal. I am not sure whether the control stiffness was due to ice in the hinges, or simply contraction of the linkages. Also, just to make matters worse, the vario had failed, presumably due to water in the system, and after a period of wild glugging, with the audio alternately grumbling and squealing along with the thrashing needles, the whole system expired and both electric and mechanical varios slowly settled back to zero. I thought that there was a significant danger that I might lose the ASI as well in the fairly short term, so I decided that it would be unwise to prolong the flight, and at 11,000 feet I levelled the wings and flew out of the north side of the cloud.
When I had cleared away enough of the condensation to be able to see anything at all, the view was unbelievable: not a patch of ground in sight, a solid but lumpy carpet of cloud about 5000 feet below, studded here and there with huge cumulus towering up to about 15,000 feet. I estimate I broke cloud two or three thousand feet below the top of mine. It did not take long to discover lots of holes in the cover as I descended, whilst trying to take a few photographs (which as usual cannot show what it really was like).
I radioed down to the launch point and was politely informed that I had been in this glider, a club machine, for over an hour, and would I please return it for someone else to fly. With 100 knots and half airbrake virtually all the way from 9500 feet to ground level, I was back in about ten minutes. It was pretty painful to have to throw away enough height for a gliding range of about 75 miles, in only about 5 miles, but the exhilaration of the flight made up for it. Later in the day I rescued and fixed the barograph trace from the Winter, and some other members downloaded the EW trace: apparently, I would just have missed out on a Gold Height claim by 37 feet! It's just as well I had already achieved all 3 Gold legs previously, as I estimate a mere 10 seconds more in this cloud would undoubtedly have got the extra few feet for me if I had needed it.
Moral of this story: you really can get a Gold Height without going up into the Scottish or Welsh wave, so get your Turn & Slip spun up and off you go. It'll give you something to do while the other club members are scratching about down at cloudbase moaning about the weather. (Errrm, safety note: Seriously, folks, do not try this yourself without some proper dual cloud-flying training first.)
Here's the trace (second flight):