Cairngorm Gliding Club
Latest news from the Club
Saturday 7th February
photo by Nick Norman
In recent years, stubborn high pressure centres over Scandinavia have caused a freezing blast nicknamed the Beast from the East, which typically lasts for a week or two. This year, the location of the high has been slightly displaced, giving persistent south-easterly winds and relatively normal temperatures for the time of year. These onshore winds have dumped an incredible amount of rain on the east coast of Scotland during the past few weeks. At the same time, the Scottish west coast, normally mild and wet in the Gulf Stream climate, has been much drier and sunnier than usual. In the Spey valley we are between these two extremes, and conditions have been neither one thing nor the other. Most of the time we just get the dull cloud that has had most of the rain squeezed out of it on the other side of the mountains.
But the steady SE wind does have occasional benefits for us, because it can create wave gaps in the cloud. Our Club Treasurer Nick Norman sent in this photo from 8,400ft, which shows wispy edges to the snowfields extending down the slopes, wispy edges to the wave clouds, and wispy edges to Dave's hair, which look amusingly similar!
He writes: "I left Aberdeen this morning, where it was raining. It has been raining for all of January (when it wasn’t snowing) and all of February so far. I traversed the Lecht, where the skiers were in thick fog. I descended into the Spey Valley, where it looked pretty grim. I arrived at Feshie at lunchtime to see a glider just landing. How did that happen? Bill Anderson had just flown 50 minutes in the only cloud gap in the whole of Scotland.
"I could see the gap above Glen Feshie - fairly typical in a SE wind. So Roger kindly launched Dave and myself in the Perkoz, and as we passed Achlean we hit strong lift. The S80 vario was giving us a climb rate of 10.5 knots, which wasn’t bad since the local horizontal component of the wind was only about 12 knots.
"It’s not often my ears struggle to equalise pressure, popping on the way up, but today was one of those days. Anyway we flew along past Einich, beyond Morlich and topped out at FL100. Unfortunately the oxygen equipment in the glider has had to be sent away to USA for service or repair, so we couldn't go any higher. We declared it was too cold, and warm soup was beckoning in the clubhouse."
AIRFIELD DIARY for Sunday 18th January
Sunday was a fabulous day for soaring the mountain waves over the Cairngorms. Photos by Paul Myers, who flew for almost 90 minutes in his single seat "Ventus" glider. He reports:
"The photo of a half frozen Loch Morlich was followed by a climb averaging 12.7 knots (almost 15mph) vertically to 13,000ft. Glories in the cloud tops, a frozen Bear's Paw, and very cold toes!"
Several other pilots made successful flights, including Nick Norman and Andy Farr who flew in the Perkoz two-seater to Corgarff Castle and back. Seven flights in all, with a total air time of 9hrs 40mins, and we think that everyone managed at least 7,000 feet in the wave (statistics by Andy Farr).
The 'glory' is a circular rainbow formation seen when the sun is directly behind. It indicates the cloud was formed of water droplets that were not frozen into ice crystals. It also means the droplets were very small compared to the size of normal raindrops, which refract sunlight in a completely different way to create an ordinary rainbow.
Also notice the tops of the wave crests are usually very smooth compared to the ragged edges down below.
Descending from a great height towards a landing at the nearby airfield. The Bear's Paw (Uath Lochans) was still completely frozen over on this day.
Stuart Naylor, one of our friends from the Highland Gliding Club near Elgin, sent us this view from the same day. He had only intended to do a short half-hour check flight, but the conditions were so good that he flew 220km (135 miles) across country, right above our heads and as far down as Dalwhinnie before returning to base. You can track his flight graphically from here.
