Thursday 9th April

It was agreed that no one could remember a flying week where we did so much flying ! The running total so far was 104 launches but comment was made that, whilst we have had busier days in terms of number of launches, these were because pilots had problems staying up and took re-lights. This week pilots have taken off only to stay up for 2, 3, 4 or 5 hours. It will be interesting to work out the total number of hours flown this week.

Today provided wave induced thermals which went to the top of a heavy inversion around 5000' Later in the day the wave became stronger and the later launches got to around 9000'. With such a stable high pressure area producing a marked inversion and not helped by heather burning on the high ground, (which, incidently, could be seen on the various satellite images), the visibility was awful. The photo below shows the stark contrast in air quality at the top of the inversion.

Tango Papa at the top of the inversion