DGS News Wednesday 13th March 2013

A chilly brisk wind from the NNW and a grey looking sky did nothing to deter the Wednesday faithful. They were determined to fly.

Most of the flights today were about gaining or maintaining currency. We welcomed visitor Loius Basquill who had a couple a short but enjoyable flights with me.

Visitor Louis Basquill looks happy as we prepare for another launch  

Apart from the club K13 and K8, Phil and Andrew flew their Astir and later Phil and Ged got the Twin Astir from it’s hangar. Towards the end of the afternoon there was a period when a thermal made a brief appearance and those left on the ground were treated to the sight of the Twin Astir, the K13 and K8 turning tight circles together.

Elsewhere on the airfield Alan continues his sanding of the SF27. ( I think painting the Forth Bridge would have been an easier task.) Trevor arrived ( no, not because he expected great flying conditions ) to check out the electronics on the Jantar.

He spent several hours checking through all the wiring and connections but could not find the reason for the GPS not talking to the LX4000 flight computer. I turned up to help, (it is my aircraft as well), and immediately realised that it was a software issue. Five minutes later, I had reset the GPS data type and hey presto, all the systems started to work correctly.

If you are wondering what the LX4000 does; it is an extremely good variometer system complete with averager; it supplies all the navigation data; wind direction and strength; it monitors the glide angle and the height required ( or surplus ) to reach the next turnpoint, and provides speed to fly information. Sometimes, I think that if we connected it to the controls, it could happily go gliding without the pilot!!

Steve