Tim Bralesford came back to the Cotswold Gliding Club for his fifth week long holiday course. He is a solo pilot, and wanted to boost his hours & launches, and of course have some fun. He has been cleared to fly our club K8, Astir and ASW19.
He managed to clock up no less than 18 hours in the week! A record (unless you know different).

Tim said : ‘I had another great week with the club, having the Astir or the ASW19 pretty much to myself. As always I was made very welcome, the weather was very hot, and the soaring conditions excellent once things got going early in the afternoon.
I had two flights of over 4 hours each, and one over 5.
The latter flight was on the Friday, and the best. I chose to launch at 2.20, straight into a 4kt climb, and the drift took me nicely away from the restricted airspace 3,000’ above the airfield (due to an airshow). Initially the conditions were blue, and an inversion killed off the thermals at about 3,500’. Slowly the inversion height increased, and then cumulus clouds started to appear with the cloudbase ending up at nearly 6,000’. Climb rates of 6-8kts were very common, with heavy sink in between.
Much fun was had hopping from cloud to cloud near cloudbase between Nympsfield and the Severn estuary. Finally, at gone 7.00, with the thermals still going, I roared back to Aston Down at a steady 100kts, arriving back over the site at 1,000’. I landed at 7.30.
The other course members were all pre-solo, and they also had a great week with plenty of soaring flights.
It doesn’t get any better!’