COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

CHAPTER ELEVEN A TESTING TIME
German. From my point of view this would be an outright sprint, no
other word for it, and I wanted to win. There was a pressing need to
exorcise the memory of my curate's egg performance at St Yan. The
£30 starting money - on top of which they even refunded your
entrance fee on arrival - and almost £150 for the winner, would go a
long way towards the cost of our expedition to France.
An anticyclone centred over the middle of Germany provided a
clockwise circulation with light southerlies at Gosselies which
absolutely demanded a track to the north east. With the advantage
from my Typhoon days of knowing much of the area like the back of
my hand, I planned carefully - to avoid the worst of the damp, low
lying, parts - and ambitiously to prolong my flight by soaring the
Minden hills at the end of the day.
So much for plans. Twenty first on the launching order meant a
delay of forty minutes and, when I came off tow, there were gliders
strung out ahead as far as the eye could see. Depressing - until the first
thermal rocketed me to well over 4000 feet - and small cumulus, not
more than a few hundred feet thick began to appear all over the sky.
Ideal racing conditions - and the going was easy - flying straight along
the thermal streets and hardly losing any height. In this way I passed
a number of competitors who were circling lower down - and, at
times, when the streeting was less pronounced, others made excellent
thermal markers. Before long I had overhauled most of the field.
After that it was a matter of continuing to force the pace. A couple
of fraught moments occurred, when high cirrus damped down the
convection, once near the Netherlands/Belgian border and again just
short of Germany airspace. But on each occasion the thermals
recovered themselves in time. Crossing the Rhine high near Wesel, in
thick haze, led to an eventual landing at Emsdetten. About 30 miles
short of the Minden hills, but enough to win the day.
The season drew to a close that year, in company with Nick
Goodhart, flying glider aerobatics at the Farnborough Air Show. Then,
at a BGA Council Meeting in the autumn, John Furlong, reporting as
Chairman of the World Championships Master Committee, told us the
seeded order for the next World Championships. Anne and I, she had
previously taken over the BGA publicity from Wally Kahn, listened
with baited breath.
Philip and Steve had stood down. Nick had been selected first, for
the open class - myself second, open or standard - Tony D2 third,
open class and Tony Goodhart fourth. I had made the Team at last!
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