Dartmoor Gliding News-Wednesday 25th March 2015

A sunny day with lightish NW breeze and 3/8th’s cloud cover. Great. This and an enthusiastic RASP (soaring) forecast lead to a rash of private gliders being rigged and ready to do great things. Mumblings about cross country tasks and much programming of flight computers followed.

The Open Cirrus, ASW20 and K8 waiting under an interesting sky.
The 2 Astirs were already lined ready to launch.

The sky looked really good but getting the initial climb to cloudbase proved to be very tricky with very narrow thermal cores. The cloudbase at 2500 –2800 feet discouraged the cross country aspirations of all pilots. There were some good flights however with Mike Gadd top of the tree with a flight of 2 hours 9 minutes in the Open Cirrus. The other notable flight of 1 hour was by Allan Holland in the club K8. Well done chaps.

Today's "Aceof Base" Mike Gadd in the Open Cirrus

Mike took this view of paragliders on Sourton Tor.

We welcomed the return to the airfield today is convalescing Wednesday instructor Bob Pirie who dropped in for a visit. It was nice to hear that he is making progress. Meanwhile, in the hangar the Twin Astir syndicate were involved in getting the C of A and ARC renewal completed which culminated in the glider being reweighed.

David Rippon took this nice view of Brentor from the K8

Thanks to everyone who helped today. Steve Raine, Mike Jardine and Fred Marks for the winch driving and the 2 pre-solo pilots who worked all day without flying.

A winch driver's view of some interesting cloud formations by Mike Jardine

Steve