Dartmoor Gliding News- Saturday 12th March 2016

Finally the weather has improved. There is a large area of high pressure centered over the UK giving us gentle settled conditions. Today it was hazy with lots of top cover. The wind was virtually non existent.

I expected that we would have a large contingent of members who had been "missing" to appear needing check rides etc but no the club was relatively quiet. We got out a K13 and the K8 and proceeded to the launch point where we were joined by the Open Cirrus that had emerged from it's winter hibernation. It looks even better this year with it's newly refinished tailplane.

The Open Cirrus emerges from hibernation

Even though it was hazy it was soarable from the off with most flights getting some additional time in the air. It was nice to see Simon Collier take a couple of check flights and then re-aquaint himself with the K8 managing a credible 14 minutes of soaring in this unfamiliar aircraft.

The visibility was quite good for the early flights
Here we see the runway from the west end 

Now it was my turn and I think I timed it just right. There was a large dark cloud mass near the site which I had convinced myself would be a convergence. Lauching the K8 to just 1000 feet (short winch run and no headwind) I turned north towards the darkest part of my "convergence" and was immediately rewarded with the glider starting to rise as I flew into some lift. A quick turn to the left had the K8 climbing like a "homesick angel". It is amazing how this glider climbs with 45+ degrees of bank and 35 knots on the clock. The lift was smooth and less than 10 minutes later there was 2800 feet on the altimeter. I stopped the climb at this point as the canopy had started to mist up and the cloudbase was only about 100 feet above.  Time to explore. To the west, over the river Tamar, the sun was shining but there seemed to be lots of sinking air there. Back under my convergence there was no need to turn to climb, straight lines worked very well. Out to the east, over the western slopes of the higher tors, same story, lots of sinking air. In between these 2 areas sat my convergence with lots of lift which continued down towards Plymouth. Great fun.

The visibility was poor under the convergence.
This was taken from west of Tavistock looking south towards Plymouth 

Longest flight of the day was by Mike Gadd in the Open Cirrus who returned after 1 hour 6 minutes to let his syndicate partner, Ged, have a go. Ged returned after another soaring flight just 10 minutes short of Mike's. Check your watch next time Ged.

Mike and Ged with the Open Cirrus

The aircraft were returned early to the hangar to allow the committee members amongst us to attend a meeting with Gordon Dennis who will be joining the instructor team this season.

A great day  ( at last )

Steve