Dartmoor Gliding News-Sunday 25th January 2015

It was a day that meteorologists would have described as ‘quiet’. With a leaden grey sky, and no movement in the atmosphere, at least to start with, it could almost have been described as ‘dull’. Except we don’t do ‘dull’ at Brentor - there’s usually a crosswind, or some other form of entertainment on the winch launch - to put paid to that notion!

We don't do dull' trainee winch driver Jeff Cragg inspects a spot of light in the gloom.

And so it turned out. But we were also conscious that, depending on which forecast you followed, there was a warm front due to arrive - it was just a matter of what o’clock your forecast said it would reach us. And so with that in mind, and with a growing band of members on hand, we were up and running before 10, keen to get in as many launches as possible before ‘precipitation’ came ‘into sight’. And to good effect too for, fresh from his Introductory Flight Pilot ground school a couple of weeks ago, plus a surprise ‘loss of power’ in his first launch of the day in the K-8, Roger Appleboom was keen to sample the delights of the back seat in the K-13 for the first time, which he did with Mike Jardine. Mike was also able to ride shotgun with returning member Dave Parker, as Dave was feeling a little ‘under par’ (suffering from an overindulgence in the side effects of ‘jive dancing’ - which he may, with a little persuasion, be prepared to describe… but not in too graphic detail!)

The K-8 'lifts off' into the leaden sky.

It was also good to see junior member Ross Pratt, from Totnes, back on the field today - being a bright teenager Ross suffers from ‘brain like a sponge’ syndrome, so we hope to see him return anon to put into practice all he learned today. In the single seat stakes the homogeneous weather precluded any feature from emerging that would put one K-8 jockey ahead of another - longest flight of the day going to Chris Jones with a sneaky 8 mins, just ahead of ‘also rans’ Colin Boyd, Jeff Cragg, Adrian Irwin, Jerry Wellington and the aforesaid Roger Appleboom.

Club Junior Member Ross Pratt flew with us for the first time since New Year's Eve.

At a little before 2pm the cloud base dropped and a fine drizzle began, thus causing us to ‘stack’ for the day. Now it could be argued that we took the decision a tad prematurely for, no sooner had the rain started, than it stopped and the sky brightened a little. So had we remained huddled in the launch hut for 20 mins or so we could have squeezed in a few more launches before the front finally arrived in earnest at around 3:30pm, however, given that everyone had flown - thus remaining current - there was no shame in calling a truce earlier than normal for once.

Thanks go to Roger Appleboom for replenishing the club’s supply of antifreeze at an unbelievably low rate, and to Chris Jones and Adrian Irwin for getting the kit out thus enabling us to achieve 20 launches in a foreshortened day. And we know the answer to last Wednesday’s blog poser about how does the yaw string (on the outside) clear the condensation (on the inside) of the canopy? It’s an ionic thing - but whether the positively charged wool of the yaw string attracts or repels the negatively charged molecules of the condensation within its arc of travel remains open to debate. Answers on a postcard, please…(or should that be twitter feed, or email?)

Martin Cropper