Dartmoor Gliding News- Sunday 14th September 2014

We all know the legend of King Canute who turned back the sea; except it wasn't quite that: rather, it was he who put his throne onto the sands to show his fawning courtiers that even he, royalty, was not able to stop the nature and the incoming tide. Today at Brentor, where thick grey cloud had prevented the sun from reaching the ground all morning, a similar kind of cry went up, "'What's all this cloud doing here?! It has no right..! How can air which has travelled all the way across the continent and then this country arrive here with enough moisture to form so much cloud?" This from our nearest equivalent of royalty Allan Holland, to which the only answer could be 'I don't know Allan, if it won't listen to you it certainly won't listen to me...'

Following which came the 'echo' "Well, the forecast said it was going to clear by midday and it's now 1202 so it should have gone by now" in an all too familiar Irish brogue. So with two pundits willing the cloud to be gone did it conform? Not a bit if it. Of course easterly winds always bring the prospect of wave at Brentor, often directly at top of the winch launch, so there was a lot of anticipation that today might be the day...

Prior to our local Canute's demands of the weather, there had been a clear demand from our solo members to get their gliders rigged, so we did so, in advance of getting club gliders to the launch point.

The arrival of One Day Course student Martin Rylands, who lives and works in Aylesbury, Bucks, kicked us into a more 'customer focused' attitude and we were soon ready to launch. Whilst the aforesaid wall to wall cloud was not conducive to easy instructional flights, we managed to get Martin into the air and make progress through the Flying List whilst the 'pundits' waited for their “Canutian” dreams to come true.
  

One Day Course Candidate Martin obviously feels the need to check his straps before another flight with Martin! 

New arrivals for a Sunday were Dad and daughter team Pete and Paula Howarth: hailing from Plymouth they had flown on a Saturday recently (in wave) but clearly  had decided that Sunday was more alluring. Pete last flew 23 years ago at Upavon whilst Paula recently experienced her first 3 flights at Brentor with our own Steve Lewis, one of which lasted 22 mins in wave. They both helped out at the launch point and we look forward to seeing a lot more of them in future.

Paul Howarth returned with her dad for some more flying

Next in the roller-coaster ride of life at Brentor it was time for 12 year old Elliot Acton's first experienced demonstration of launch failures both at height and from 500ft land straight ahead.

Solo pilots continued to find no lift, including those who castigated the weather for not changing at exactly 1200, until late afternoon when, after spending some time on the winch, Jerry Wellington took club 'hot ship' K-8 into the sky and flew a line of energy at 2,500ft for 33 mins, easily trouncing the second longest flight (Jantar) at 27 mins.

And from then on conditions improved dramatically, so perhaps Allan Holland's words with the weather had more clout than those of King Canute?! Thanks go to all the team, including newcomers, who helped out on the ground, thus enabling others to get into the sky - it was a case of 'add one move round' throughout the day.

And the wind stays set from the east for Wednesday - who can remember when a period of easterly winds has lasted for over a week?

Surely there must be wave in prospect?

Martin Cropper