Dartmoor Gliding News-Sunday 3rd January 2016

As we drove through Tavistock, the water erupting vertically from the manhole covers made it obvious that this first Sunday of 2016 was not going to be a flyable.

And so we settled on this year's must have for the upwardly aspiring solo pilot or instructor: a pass in the Bronze 'C' Examination. With the threshold set at 70% for ordinary mortals, and 80% for instructors, and with one section containing only 5 questions (ie. more than one mistake equals failure overall) it is important to be confident of success prior to putting oneself forward for this exam. And so, over the course of the morning, we debated various questions in a teach-in manner, which certainly blew away the seasonal cobwebs and got us thinking about some of the more important factors about this sport of ours.

Paula and Peter Howarth pore over the 1:500,000 Aeronautical Chart
in search of answers for the Bronze C Exam

We were not complete nerds, however, for various visitors, such as Allan Holland, and Pete Harvey (accompanied by wife Jules) broke the routine. Pete's intervention was most welcome, in that he was able to inform us that the weather in Antigua was eminently soarable throughout the Christmas period (if only you could find a glider capable of operating from water) and that the entire Caribbean was 'benign' – thanks, Pete..! He also informed us that syndicate partner Chris Owen had not returned with them to the UK because he (just had to) make up a vacant space in a skiing party to Italy and contrary to expectations there was a lot of snow.

Oh, you may be interested to know that last year we exceeded the previous year's total number of launches. For more details on this see the end of month KPI message that will shortly appear on the Forum

Martin Cropper