August, a UK record breaking month for Bidford

25 year old Jordan Johnson set himself a challenge for the 1st August 2026 and decided to do the largest triangular route he could in the UK. The result was he managed to create not one but six UK records, signed off by the British Gliding Association (BGA).

Jordan has been a member of Bidford Gliding and Flying Club since joining as part of our junior membership program. He has been competing on the UK BGA ladder for a number of years and has some competition within the club for setting UK records.

About his trip Jordan commented “After being told by Matt Scutter (SkySight) that I had failed to maximise the day before, I thought I’d push it even further today to make absolutely sure I had really pushed the limits of what was possible. Also thanks to Chris Gill for encouraging me to try for the bigger triangle I did today.

Thanks to Bill Inglis for the perfect aerotow to get my day started right on time. That was an invaluable resource that I absolutely needed so it wouldn’t have been possible without you, thanks again Bill.

First leg out of Bidford wasn’t too dreadful. I had another long glide out to the first cumulus where I was treated by 3-4kt climbs and a cloudbase of 3100ft AGL above relatively flat ground. The further into Wales I flew, the more difficult the conditions became. There was a good 100km of the task where the cloudbase was still only 3000ft AMSL as I approached the West coast of Wales (into coastal wind) with ground level being well over 1000-1500ft which meant cloudbase wasn’t anymore than 2000ft AGL above mostly unlandable terrain and so almost every climb was done using the artificial horizon instrument!

Leg 2 immediately had a slight improvement, but the real reason this felt a little easier was because I now had a tailwind component in the wind. Due to high workload, I’d almost failed to spot I was heading directly towards Manchester airspace and so had to divert around it in what wasn’t great weather and then over the Peak District things became hard again like the previous day. North of Sheffield was again almost unsoarable with huge gaps to cross and I just had to take a punt at turning the turnpoint low and trying to climb away.

Conditions really improved from Lincoln with 8000ft cloud base out in East Anglia. I had to fly through the sea breeze convergence and out the other side of it through a lot of sink to reach the turning point. It wasn’t obvious where the lift was so I spent a while there trying to climb back up.

Once I was back in the game the conditions continued to be very good for the rest of the task. I had to stop to top up height in a weak 2kt blue thermal at Banbury to make sure I didn’t bust the 1000m Loss of Height rule in the BGA Ladder competition .

Thanks again to London Information for your services.

What a day!!

A quick note in response to comments on another flight. Shape factor is absolutely spot on, if anything it’s undervalued still. You don’t appreciate flying a huge triangle until you attempt to do it. You really have to push out into the unsoarable areas and you’re never really flying into wind or downwind, it’s usually always an awkward crosswind. Huge distances across the best weather amongst flat terrain is significantly easier to do, especially in higher performance gliders and with 2 pilots to share the workload.