Badge Flying
Flying for Badges at LKSC.
Flying for badges is a great discipline and gives you something to aim for in a form all glider pilots will understand. A badge can be just a personal goal or it can be a useful qualification for overseas flying.
Starting with the basics, the requirements of the Silver C badge can be achieved on a single day at Lake Keepit through most of the summer months. Certainly staying up for 5 hours is mostly a test of stamina rather than a test of the conditions. With a normal launch to 2000' and typical cloud bases of 9.000+, the height component is not too hard.
There are several tasks with the required 50 kilometre leg from LKSC which never leave you outside gliding range of club. Of course you can outland somewhere to prove you did it! But there are several FAI triangles using well known turn points, which on a typical day never take you beyond gliding distance of the club strip with a good airstrip at each turn point.
In fact it might be better to look at something more challenging to start with!
If you are interested in doing some badge flying, contact the club and ask for the task list and turn point coordinates… get yourself a map and start planning!