Gliding in Winter

I went gliding yesterday. When I arrived at the airfield it was a little misty. "That'll soon burn off, " I thought, and we got the gliders out. Off to the clubhouse to deliver the morning briefing, and to watch the mist turn to fog.

After some coffee we had some tea, but eventually the fog cleared. We took a K13 and two K21s out. The K21s are fibreglass gliders with a high thermal mass. Moisture condensed on them and immediately froze. It's not safe to fly with ice on the wings but as fast as we cleared it mother nature replaced it.

We took the hint. The K13 is an older glider predominantly made from wood and fabric. That means a lower thermal mass, which meant the condensation didn't freeze, and that meant we could fly.

I wanted to check the weather from the air, and another instructor wanted to do a flight as she hadn't flown for a while. We took the K13. To the south-east of the airfield there was low-level cloud (probably "fog" to those on the ground there). It looked fabulous from above (the photo doesn't do it justice):

I took advantage of the fact that I had a very experienced person flying the glider and took some photos. Here's a shot of the airfield:

The white dots on the main runway in approximately the middle of the picture are where we launched from (and would shortly land). The winch that pulled us up is out of shot at the other end of the main runway.

Here we're just turning to line up to land on the grass to the left of the main runway, again around the middle of the picture (lots of reflections in the glider canopy, sorry):

Later the temperature increased, the K21s thawed out, and suddenly we could fly three gliders. Even though we had to limit each student to just two flights in order to have time to fly everyone, much was learned.

By getting one member to focus on turning the glider smoothly and gently, we went from something that felt like a fairground ride to a work of art.

Another member flew the whole flight himself for the first time.
Him: did you touch the controls at all?
Me: no.
My verbal prompts were rewarded with a big smile!

With another member we discussed the finer points of dealing with emergency situations, in this case the correct actions to take if the winch launch fails for any reason (for example, the launch cable may break).

For the last flight of the day I had another very experienced club member fly me round to land by the hangar. Another opportunity to take photos, this time of the mist starting to form in the valleys near the airfield:

All in all, a good day!