Today was the first of this years “Solo Only” days. There were no instructors on duty so flying was limited to licenced pilots only.
The forecast was giving easterly winds with a mostly blue sky. In fact there was rather a lot of cloud from time to time. At times the conditions were difficult as demonstrated by Andrew Beaumont who soared his Astir for 1hr 46 mostly below 2000 feet. He landed with a big grin on his face and handed the glider over to Phil, his syndicate partner, who then flew for over 3 hours during which he enjoyed strong thermal conditions and wave to over 4000 feet.
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| Andrew was the first pilot to soar in his Astir |
The ASW20 syndicate of Bob Pirie and Martin Broadway both made use of the conditions with Bob managing a good flight in the afternoon wave.
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| The Pirat where Matthew landed it in the field |
Matthew Wiles had big plans today. A possible 5 hours, a short cross country flight; Brentor – Okehampton East – Roadford Reservoir – Brentor; and a chance to get to grips with the latest flight computer now installed in the club Pirat. At flying heights to wind was over 20 knots so these were ambitious plans indeed. After 1hr 34 minutes we had a telephone call from Matt; he hand landed out and was safely in a field near his Okehampton turnpoint.
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| Ready for the trailer |
Andrew Beaumont, Martin Broadway and I dashed off with the Pirat trailer to collect Matt. This went without drama except for the look on student Matt’s face when we explained that is customary for the pilot to treat his retrieve crew to a beer; a custom he upheld later. During the trip back to the club Matt was recounting his flight and he mentioned sharing a thermal over Okehampton with another glider but not one of ours. We assumed this must have come from North Hill.
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| Back to the airfield |
After reassembling the Pirat we went back up to the runway to discover that we had a visitor, John Pursey from North Hill, who had dropped in, in his beautifully presented Lak12, after flying down from his home airfield to soar the Dartmoor wave. He had managed to reach 7500 feet in the wave but, by pushing out to a pre-planned turnpoint, had dropped out of the system and had cut off any chance of a return to North Hill. Interestingly, he had been pair flying with Ron Johns in his ASW20 who had managed the return trip to North Hill and arrived a little later with John’s car.
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| Visitor John Pursey with his Lak 12 |
Elsewhere, Rick Wiles, Dave Bouchier and Allan Holland had resisted joining in the flying fun to continue the refurbishment of the GusLaunch winch which is required soon to allow further works to be completed on the ML winch.
A great day with friends and a little excitement.
Steve
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