Dartmoor Gliding News-Sunday 4th January 2015

Answering the inevitable Monday morning question “How was your weekend - what did you get up to?” with the almost equally inevitable “Well on Sunday it was gliding” my Boss responded with “Well I shouldn’t think there’s much gliding going on at this time of year!” Before launching into an exposition of pressure systems, wind directions, inversions and wave I considered my position: he, the naval equivalent of a Brigadier and going places - me a junior officer, master of my own mediocrity and going nowhere - he must be right!

Following the north-westerly that drenched the airfield on Saturday, the forecast for Sunday was for the wind to veer through north to south-easterly; and as we Sunday Soarers know a south-easterly wind equals - wave!

But before getting seduced by this possibility there was the little matter of test flying the club’s latest asset, K-13 G-CHXP. And who better to do so than Instructor David Jesty (see photo), who reported that the glider ‘flies well enough, although the Total Energy is completely (expletive deleted)!’ This was consolidated by a flight later in the day by Colin Boyd and I, which indeed confirmed the need for a little ‘fettling’ with the instruments.

Instructor David Jesty checks out new K-13 G-CHXP prior to its test flight.

 But ‘where away’ the wave? (as the whalers of yore would have put it). In order to investigate this, over the course of 3 flights Adrian Irwin forensically quartered the sky in the K-8: first to the south, then to the north and lastly to the east, including over Mary Tavy. All 3 flights were of 7 minutes duration, but none revealed any wave. Examination of the sky over Dartmoor showed there to be a cone of orographic cloud between Cox Tor and Middle Staple Tor which remained all day, but no sign of any lee wave. It would appear that we would have been better placed on one of the ridges to the south, say the Beacon at Ivybridge, where I suspect some hang gliders were able to exploit the conditions; sadly our airfield is not portable…

Visitor Lawrence Lowry, from Bere Alston, flew with David Jesty.

The south-easterly wind did, however, give a beautifully smooth, and delightfully crossed airflow for trainees Pete Harvey and Chris Owen to practice their circuit planning and approaches under David Jesty’s tutelage and our visitor, Lawrence Lowry (see photo), from Bere Alston, was also given a couple of trial lessons by David. Today’s ‘blast from the past’; was Richard Roberts who, having last flown with the club 18 years ago, and with a little cajoling from Colin Boyd, strangely found himself back in the front seat for a flight with Roger Green. We look forward to welcoming Richard into the fold as a regular member once more.

Orographic cloud funnelled up between Cox Tor and Middle Staple Tor all day.

K-8 GDK was kept busy today, not only by Adrian Irwin, but also by Chris Jones, Jerry Wellington and I, as evidenced by the photo taken in late afternoon as the overcast crept in from the south. So the question of the day has to be: how does an ex-military, retired airline pilot with thousands of hours at the controls get beaten to the ‘Flight of the Day’ award by a personal finance advisor with less time in the air than the average Air Cadet (Jerry Wellington’s 10 mins trumping Adrian Irwin’s 7 mins - twice!). My money’s on some dodgy log-keeping; surely it can’t have been Jerry’s flying… can it?

View looking NE over Blackdown mid afternoon, the cloud gradually thickening prior to rain.

In a perverse kind of way it’s always reassuring to notice the first spots of rain on the windscreen when leaving the airfield - proof that - after 28 launches - there’s ‘not much’ going on in gliding at this time of year!

Martin Cropper