Dartmoor Gliding News-Saturday 4th April 2015

Today was definitely a day of 2 halves. In the morning, 7/8ths cloud with a very low base and a northerly crosswind of 14knots with some wicked gusting kept everything in the hangar.

Fitting new cables to the GusLaunch
(or are we just talking about it)

 As usual the assembled members got on with the jobs that needed attention. The GusLaunch winch had new cables fitted ready to return to service. The K13’s were surveyed for the fitting of GoPro type cameras, a project being pushed forward by Chris Jones and Rick Wiles. We were visited by Mary Browne who had arrived for an Introductory Flight but the weather was still out of limits. Her family looked on as she was given some instruction in the simulator in preparation for her flight which has been rebooked for next Saturday.

Mary Browne concentrating in the simulator

The afternoon sky

By mid afternoon the weather had improved markedly. Cloudbase was now much higher with about 3/8ths cloud cover and the crosswind had reduced to 8 knots with very little gustiness. K13 G-CHXP was taken to the launchpoint and several flights were undertaken by our pilots to keep current. The best flight was Fred Marks flying the K13 from the back seat with 31minutes to 2800 feet. All the flights were launched using the GusLaunch winch which performed flawlessly after it’s extended period of maintenance.

Chris Jones trying unsuccessfully to photograph a couple of buzzards while being flow by Fred Marks
Picture taken from the mounted GoPro camera

Steve