In article , Stefan wrote:
Thinking at it ... those 5000 ft you mentioned in an earlier post
should have been enough to reach Scotland ... your once in a decade
chance to aquire silver distance! Nobody tried?

Trouble is we have to know in advance. We're not part of the UK and we
need to inform Customs if we're going there! Unless you're flying to a
large airfield you need to give them 24 hrs notice.

It is actually possible to just about squeak out the Silver distance
here by going right to the Point of Ayre and down to Chicken Rock. We
have discussed the possibility of doing this. The main problem is
getting either a very high cloudbase to climb up and do it all as a
'final glide' or consistent conditions across the island (we have a very
varied microclimate - it can be socked in so bad all day at Ronaldsway
that the airliners aren't moving, and we can be soaring in reasonable
thermals in the north only 30nm away). On the day we got all that
altitude, the 'booming conditions' were in a region only a few miles
square (although I think that day I could have glided up to the Point of
Ayre, back to Maughold, where it was working, climbed back up to 5,300,
then gone to Chicken Rock and then land at Ronaldsway). We do need to do
a little preparation for this such as make sure the grass areas at
Ronaldsway airport are landable because I don't think they'll want us on
their runways because they have quite a bit of airline traffic.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"