Cairngorm Gliding Club
Latest news from the Club
AIRFIELD DIARY for Saturday 28th February
Beautiful sunny day, with a light southerly breeze and even a few early spring thermals. Photos by Stewart Hills (Kincraig).
The north end of Loch Einich, looking east towards Cairn Gorm. The flat-bottomed cloud layer shows that thermal convection is present, but the clouds are aligned with the mountain slopes leaving blue sky over the river. This is a common pattern, suggesting wave influence is at work here. The leading edges and tops of the clouds also exhibit wave-like curvature. Pilots learn to recognise these clues in their search for lift.
The south end of the loch, as seen from the vicinity of the Sgòr Gaoith viewpoint. We are looking towards Blair Atholl and Glen Tilt in the distance, although the visibility is not very good, and the view would be better if the glider was a bit higher. Sometimes the pilot has to settle for a narrow gap between the mountain tops and the cloud bottoms!
Jordan Thomson, flying his Standard Cirrus glider, looks over his shoulder as Stewart edges in for a close-up. The Cirrus has a 15 metre wingspan and was very successful in competitions during the 1970s and 1980s, although the turned-up wingtips on this one were added much later.
Overhead view of the airfield, with another aerotow launch about to begin. The braided streams of the Feshie river are seen clearly here.
Near the top right corner, notice the dark wooded sector between the river and the south end of the runway. This was actually part of the riverbed about 25 years ago. The trees have grown up in the last couple of decades as the river has shifted its course to the west.
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.
