DGS News Sunday 7th April 2013

A Day at the Races.  No, not a reference to the Marx Brothers, or Queen album, but to the overhead view that was had by David Jesty, Roger Appleboom and Martin Cropper today. 

Good view of the Point To Point racecourse just south of the airfield

Once again one of the Saturday pundits proved to be the harbinger of doom, in this case Steve Lewis, whose parting shot at last night’s AGM was “I hope the wind doesn’t put you out of limits…”  Which indeed it did.

As photo shows the windsock was bar taut.  Not a day for the faint hearted.  And so it fell to David Jesty to cancel the One Day Course and 4 x Trial Lesson bookings, to return another day, whilst the faithful few who remained decided to remain current in strong wind conditions. 

The view from the winch showing the strong south easterly cross wind conditions

 Conditions proved ‘interesting’ in that, whilst a wind in the south east had the possibility of producing wave, today it caused the ridge to the south-east of the site to generate lift, not just for a fleeting beat, but sufficient for Roger Appleboom to be able to work for 13 minutes.  That set a target for Martin Cropper to beat.  Strangely enough, with Roger keeping the log, Martin’s time came in at one minute less, or is it fewer?

Nonetheless, the south-easterly wind gave both pilots the opportunity to undertake some valuable marketing for the club; namely by displaying DMX up and down the racecourse at Cherrybrook in full view of the thousands of spectators at today’s point-to-point (but not below 500ft, of course!). 

The final turn for the horses.

As the photo of the racecourse shows, the horses ‘final turn’ and start/finish line was just above the cockpit edge, whilst the line of energy that Roger exploited was from bottom right to top left of the photo, just left (to windward) of the Cherrybrook river valley. 

Thanks to Heather for driving retrieve (and general morale - upward), and Colin Boyd for keeping wings on ground/at a suitable angle during various stages of the launch/recovery process.   

Martin Cropper