Dartmoor Gliding News-Sunday 14th February 2016

The 'approach shot', taken from Harrowbeer aerodrome looking north-east at 0800, clearly shows a cap cloud over the moor and an edge of rising air to the west with which we are very familiar when the wind is anywhere east of north/south.

View from another airfield: Harrowbeer looking north-east at 0800.
Cap cloud and a wavy edge clearly in evidence.

So that bade well for an interesting day's flying, as many fellow members obviously thought, as there were at least 14 of us, lure by the the north-easterly forecast, assembled at the club by 0900. Sadly, however, the other familiar element we have become used to this winter is the rain which, since it had stopped only just after sunrise, following intermittent showers yesterday, left the field in no fit condition from which to fly.

A good turnout at the club today, sadly to be thwarted by...

...the field being akin to a waterbed, as the tyremarks clearly show..

How frustrating! Did the wave actually form? Well, with a wind profile decreasing in strength with height and, looking at the sky later in the day, it wasn't guaranteed – there were a couple of lenticulars downwind but nothing to suggest wave over Brentor.

So we busied ourselves with keeping the woodburner going (it was bitterly cold outside – Maslow's hierarchy of needs applies..!), some teach-ins about spins, tightly banked turns and the ziz-zag circuit, whilst the Greens (Barry and Roger) got on with selling their cobra trailer to a couple from Sutton Bank (Yorkshire), whose departure was delayed by the fact that the 12-pin electrical connector disintegrated into - 12 pins, 7 wires and no idea where each should go..! With the help of Pete Howarth, however, (one of those unusual males who reads first before assembling) a instruction card was found that enabled the right coloured wire to be screwed into the correctly numbered pin and eventually, after a finger numbing half an hour, they were away.

With the next couple of days promising dry, sunny weather, there is good reason to hope for flying to be possible on Wednesday.

Martin Cropper