Dartmoor Gliding News-Saturday 16th August 2014

The RASP soaring forecast looked great. This seemed  a little at odds with today’s weather forecast but, never mind, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Even allowing for the fact that Saturday stalwarts Mike and Rick were away at Aston Down  the club was very quiet. In fact we had no club trainees at all so, Instructor Ged Nevisky and I decided to share the flying of today’s planned 5 visitors Michael Dyer, Barry Bowden, Alan Moss, Nick Jest and John King. Everyone seemed to enjoy their flights.

Michael Dyer with Ged in the K13

Alan Moss flew with me. The "Rambo style" headgear is a video camera. 

Nick Jest also flew with me

Visitor John King pictured here with Ged

Today’s highlight was Mike Keller flying his syndicate K8 for the first time. His smile showed us how much he enjoyed this glider which always looks so well turned out. He was helped with the rigging and derigging by a couple of us with lots of experience of this glider type and I am sure we will have him fully trained in the black art of glider rigging real soon.

Mike Keller looks pleased with his K8

And the weather? Well, the wind remained straight down the runway all day giving easy flying conditions with great launch heights to 1500 feet. The conditions were cyclic with an area of soarable clouds followed by a line of showers followed by a dead area with no discernable convection and then another area of soarable clouds etc. The conditions recycled four times throughout the day. We saw lots of showers but none fell on the airfield.

The unsoarable conditions overhead following a line of showers with better looking clouds in the distance

So getting a good flight was a matter of timing ( and maybe luck? ). Best flight of the day was visitor Alan Moss flying in K13 G-DDMX with me. We soared for 27 minutes to 2500 feet and only returned to the airfield to free up the glider for it’s next flight.

Many thanks to those members who did turn up and made today the pleasure that it was.

Steve