COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

CHAPTER TEN CHARIOTS OF FIRE
Then the fronts went through and it swung into the northwest.
We had five contest days. For the first three I played safe, trying
to climb as high as possible, unashamedly ballooning downwind. On
the third day there had been an optional task,a race to Boston, and I
deliberately opted for the alternative - free distance and height - to
avoid changing my tactics. It was a good move. I made the greatest
distance of those who had elected not to fly the task, which moved me
up to fourth overall.
Ambition stirred. A weak trough was expected to go through on
the following day. I would sit on the hill until conditions improved and
travel behind it to the coast. My flight this time would be to a
pre-declared goal, earning an extra bonus. Or so I hoped. Others had
done the same already, mostly to Ingoldmells, an aerodrome near
Skegness.
Except that the conditions didn't improve and I got stuck on the
ridge, milling around with a number of unhappy late starters. The rest
had gone long ago and Ingoldmells seemed impossibly far away. So
much for ambition. I could see myself landing back with a duck. And
then something very strange occurred. As we homed in on another
feeble thermal a length of lavatory paper materialised amongst the
circling gliders - to be followed almost immediately by another - and
yet another.
Sandy Saunders 1 secret weapon! Each time he hit a surge of lift
Sandy threw a length of bumph out of the CV panel2 and then wound
his circle tightly round it. What the situation must have been like
inside his cockpit I hate to think and the cavortings of his Olympia
soon frightened the others away.
But not Don Brown and myself. Don was sharing the Surrey Weihe
with Wally Kahn and he had been flying with great determination. We
were both desperate to get away, ready to try anything, and it was just
possible that Sandy's bumph might do the trick.
We harried him without mercy, confused at first by the erratic
performance of his offerings, which swung hither and thither, at one
moment rising in sinuous elegance and in the next collapsing
earthwards. Eventually, by following the more positive ones, we
managed to pull ourselves up to a height at which we could risk
leaving the site.
Downwind, in the far distance, there was blue sky and cumulus. I
drifted away, hanging on to the last vestiges of that elusive lift, and
then turned eastwards under the grey sheet of cloud. There was
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