After all the excitement and glory of Sunday's achievements comes the paperwork. Well, for the club's Official Observer (OO), that is, following the witnessing and downloading of flight traces and flight analysis, there is the filling in of the British Gliding Association (BGA) claim forms.
We have come a long way since smoking a barograph foil, sealing and signing the barograph, fixing the resultant trace using hair spray, unloading the 35mm film from the turnpoint camera, and getting it developed. Now GPS loggers record every second of the flight and clearly demonstrate whether the turnpoint sector has been correctly entered. We've moved on from that initial digital step in terms of convenience. No longer does the OO have to hook his laptop to the logger in the glider and download the .igc file. SD cards or USB sticks are the norm. Downloading by Bluetooth to one's phone is now an option too.
For example, obtaining Andy's trace was simplicity itself. Andy removed his Oudie N IGC from its cradle in his Ventus CT and handed it to me. I entered my email address and pressed send. The .igc file was sent to my inbox for later analysis.
So what are the outcomes of my Official Observer analysis and form filling?
Ed - Silver/Gold Duration (5 hours). He already has his silver height. Just the 50 km distance to get to complete his Silver badge.
Andy - Diamond Distance (a 500 km flight). He already has his gold badge and two diamonds (Height - a 5,000 m climb and Goal - 300 km round predeclared waypoints). He now has a full house of three diamonds, a tremendous achievement.
Scratch - Silver Height (a 1,000 m climb). He didn't get to North Hill; he was at 4,900 ft, just shy of Credition, facing a huge "black" hole and turned back. He had covered 32 km of his 50 km. In hindsight, with the glide angle of the Standard Cirrus, he could have glid well over 30 km towards North Hill and made to a field to get his 50 km. Next time.
Elsewhere, John Allan flew his Diamond Distance (500 km) on Saturday, thereby also getting a full set of diamonds. Bravo!
Freddie managed a two-hour flight in the K-8, so achieving his first hour-long flight as part of his Sailplane Pilot Licence.
On reviewing the flight traces of FXB while trying to work out why it wasn't communicating with the Atom base station, John Allan and I found that Michael's first flight in the K-8 on Saturday had netted him Silver Height.
Well done all. Now they pays their money and send off the forms to the BGA.
Moving to today. What would the Wednesday Wavers find at the club? A change in the weather was on the cards. There had been some rain on Tuesday, more than had been forecast.
Strangely, there were no visitor flights booked for today, so Duty BI Phil had an unexpected opportunity to rig his DG300 and go flying on his own. We welcomed friends Ken Basterfield and Paul Ives. Paul hails from Exmouth. Ken had flown at Brentor with the Albatross club and then DGS in the past. He decided to return to the gliding fold and joined the club. Paul, a microlight pilot, had completed most of his pre-solo training elsewhere and was keen to see what DGS had to offer.
Mike Jardine was absent from his place of duty (pre-planned), so Peter was the Duty Instructor. At the morning brief, he counted up to 12 members who may need training flights, and so he co-opted Rick's help. With that step, they then made short shrift of the flying list. So much so that returning temporary member Simon Wood flew with Rick at 1300 and enjoyed a fantastic 37-minute soaring flight in the Twin Astir. Simon, now you can see what all the fuss is about.
Rowan kicked off the training flights with a practice launch failure and circuit before handing over to Team Nicholson; Jess in the K-13 with Peter and Ed in the Twin Astir with Rick. Then Peter took returning member Steve Lesson through his paces, also with a go-around practice launch failure. It was approaching midday, and so the solo pilots went soaring; Jamie in the Astir CS77 and John Smith in the K-8.
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| Robin climbs through 2,000 feet |
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| The K-13's wing takes a "swipe" at the airfield |
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| Peter and Robin share a thermal with Jamie in the Astir CS77 on his way to clocking up another hour of air time. |
After Jamie's flight, John Allan took the Astir CS77 aloft for an hour. He shared the sky with Steve Fletcher and Phil, who flew for over two hours each in the local area in the Open Cirrus and DG300 respectively. The trainees were getting extended flights too; Ian 29 minutes in the Twin Astir with Rick, and Robin 43 minutes with Peter in the K-13, as the photos show.
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| And seemingly far below is Steve Fletcher's Open Cirrus |
Back at the hangar, after the weighing and the deflection measurements of Mike's Club
Libelle, Colin resumed working on FSD. Surfaces were cleaned, prepared
and taped up; he sprayed the lower half of the side panels a spiffing
blue. The top half and the nose will be painted white next.
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| Visiting Pilot Paul Ives gets to fly with Peter. |
Visiting Pilot Paul flew with Peter for 42 minutes and thoroughly enjoyed his flight. I think he might be hooked.
In May, the tyre on the jockey wheel on the front support of my trailer was looking tired (pun not intended), and so I ordered a replacement wheel from the Bay of Eels. Ten days ago, when we rolled the trailer out of the glider rack for CNN's Annual Inspection and ARC we found out what the heat over the last couple of months could do.
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| And that's a big split! |
Once bitten, I decided to do it right and go back to the source, Knott, a well-known engineering and trailer supplies company in Germany. The support arm was also past its best. So I ordered a replacement that had a longer throw and was heavy duty. Steve Lewis and I removed the old one and fitted the new one with fresh Nyloc M12 nuts, and tested it. Perfect and an improvement on the original. Job done.
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| The new support wheel with increased load capacity and extended stroke (Peter, stop sniggering at the back!). |
After my planned work was complete, it was time to go flying. There were few candidates for the club single-seaters today. Unusually, we were able to set a one-hour limit on flight duration. Michael M-S made his second and third solo flights in FXB, extended circuits in the morning before handing it over to John Smith, who flew for 48 minutes as the conditions became thermic as mentioned above. Then it was Malcolm's turn. After a flight of exactly an hour, he handed the glider to me.
It looked good at the launch point, and I was able to climb reasonably easily. Alasdair in the Astir CS77 was trying to join me and make use of my marking the thermal near Mary Tavy. My goal was Princetown, but that was in doubt when I was in the air. I couldn't pick out the radio mast for a long time in the murk. Also, the cloud base was lower than I hoped as the moors rose in height. A 2,200ft cloudbase wasn't enough to make the push to the prison, so I headed into the wind and made Horrabridge and then looked at RAF Harrowbeer at Yelverton. I could see that it had been cleared after the big WWII nostalgia event last weekend.
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The low cloud base thwarted my trip to Princetown,
so I headed towards Burrator reservoir. |
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| But even that route was hampered by low cloud |
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| So I headed towards the River Tavy estuary and the Hamoaze to loop around Tavistock |
There was still plenty of time in the day, and CFI Rick was able to take Ed, and sister Jess, and Rowan on some soaring flights. Or was it the other way around?
Alasdair made his one hour, and since there were no other takers for the glider, he was told to stay aloft, much to his delight. With a similar situation with the K-8, Michael M-S flew his fourth single-seater flight and went soaring for over half an hour, only coming down because he ran out of lift.
After exploring and investigating all parts of his new club, Ken flew with Peter in the K-13.
The day delivered more than the Wednesday Wavers dared to believe, from the low cloud and damp start to the day. Soaring was enjoyed by almost all the pilots today.
Today we made 28 flights, welcomed a new member, a visiting pilot who may join us, a returning temporary member who had a great flight, lots of training, a glider weighing, and other maintenance tasks completed. There was soaring to be had as well.
When I returned home, a parcel from Vertigo was waiting with the two reflective canopy covers for the Twin Astirs. A cynic, or maybe a realist, would say they were just in time for the wet weekend. Well, of course it's going to be wet; it's the August Bank Holiday weekend, but intrepid DGS members would still make it to the club.
Gavin Short
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