Dartmoor Gliding News-Long Mynd Expedition 2016

Sunday 17th April

The patches of snow on the top of the Long Mynd didn’t bode particularly well for the start of the week - at Dartmoor we are all acutely aware of the effects of melting snow on an already saturated airfield.

It was coming up to 10a.m. on Sunday morning and I had left Taunton at 6.30. Three and a half hours to the Mynd towing a glider trailer with a rather inadequate Renault Kangoo van wasn’t bad, and would probably give the members towing a glider from the Brentor area a journey of four and a half to five hours, considerably less without a trailer.

Mike Gadd was the only other DGS member at the airfield, having travelled up the day before in the hope of making the most of a potentially flyable weekend, The airfield was a hive of activity, with MGC members rigging and dragging out club gliders, intent on making the most of the day after a pretty horrendous Saturday, (2 - 4 ins. of snow had fallen the previous day.) “Wind 5 knots W, sunny and thermic” declared the log sheet. The first launch was at 10.30a.m., the first of 57 that day. Using a single cable and a retrieve winch is a fast and efficient launch method.
With us both rigged by midday, Mike needed a check flight while the duty instructor was happy with me taking the K6 up straight away, being current and having spent a week at the Mynd last year. By 1.30 we had both taken to the air - Mike declining the chance to soar with the instructor in the club twin Astir, preferring to get his Cirrus in to action with an early circuit taster of 6 minutes followed by a ‘grand tour’ of the westerly valley and surrounds lasting an impressive 2.5 hours. My own K6 seemed to enjoy the Shropshire air, bobbing around in thermal lift, possible convergence, needing air brake on three occasions at 4000ft to avoid disappearing totally in to cloud.

Sunday - The Mynd at 5000 QNH Mike Gadd

By mid-afternoon the northern part of the ridge seemed, from a distance, to have been infested by a large swarm of insects, which on closer inspection turned out to be several thousand (o.k., slight exaggeration!) hang gliders and paragliders, with model aircraft lower and further north - all revelling in the ridge lift that a westerly brings to the Long Mynd. Soaring with other gliders is, with careful lookout, fun; soaring with the Red Kite of the area is Awesome, ridge soaring in a gaggle of hang gliders is, well, interesting.

By late afternoon, for any pilot slightly disorientated, the airfield became even easier to locate when a strange kryptonite green glow appeared near the clubhouse. Clearly noticeable from 2,500ft, this turned out to be Colin Boyd’s van, newly arrived with his own K6CR along with Robin Wilson.

The K21 on the wire

By the time flying had stopped at 6.30 all the DGS crew, except Martin Cropper, had arrived,and with the MGC catering service having a night off we all adjourned to Wentnor, a tiny village in the western lea of the ridge for a huge pub meal at the Crown, washed down with the local ale. A good start to the week.

Monday 18th April, and an introduction to the ‘Short West’.

The airfield at the Long Mynd runs north to south and is bounded by public rights of way; any easterly/westerly will mean launching in to a crosswind - not necessarily a problem for a pilot, but a situation which could, without the proper checks and balances, result in a walker, cyclist, bird watcher being  injured by a drifting cable. At the morning briefing Dave Crowson, the duty instructor, gave us the possible field layouts, the most probable being the ‘short west’. This involved siting the winch near the clubhouse, on the edge of the ridge, across the field and no more than several hundred yards from the gliders on line, giving a launch of a few seconds and a launch height of two to three hundred feet - literally lobbing us off the ridge. The pilot would then either connect with the ridge lift or, if necessary, land out in one of the two fields below the ridge previously selected as the ‘get out of jail’ option. Sounded interesting! Wind W 25knots and gusting. Short west it was then.

Martin Cropper tries out the K21 back seat
while the ground crew behave themselves

Adrian Irwin went first in the ASK 21, duty instructor in the back seat, followed by Simon Collier and Robin Wilson all scrabbling away from launch heights that us ‘Brentorians’ would consider a low level launch failure; all seeming to make light work of a form of soaring we just don’t get at Dartmoor. Mike Gadd went next in his Cirrus, then me in the K6.

Monday, 20knt Westerly. Ridge soaring a sailplane for the first time
at one of the best ridge sites in the country. Mike Gadd

Meanwhile in the K21 Colin Boyd stretched his check flight to 1 hour 11 minutes, Dave Downton, our ‘Voice of Dartmoor’, got his longest ever flight at 1 hour 2 minutes. Mike Bennett played around on the ridge for for just under an hour and Martin Cropper, fresh from his impromptu tour of the Midlands, finally arrived at the airfield in time to enjoy a flight of 1 hour 4 minutes. Adrian Irwin, cleared for the K23, also flew for over an hour. Only eleven launches that day, but everyone flew, all flights were over 25 minutes, some considerably more, and we all enjoyed a day of safe and exhilarating ridge soaring.

Dave ( The Voice of Dartmoor ) ready to go in the K21

Tuesday 19th April, A day of Promise!

Morning briefing - wind NNW, veering to the E later…..maybe, Unfortunately the weather is often no respecter of the forecast. We set up the field to launch to the north, discussed options for launch failures and commenced flying at 11.23a.m. Adrian took the first launch as P2 and was back in three minutes. I took the second and managed five. Adrian again four minutes, me again four minutes. Colin Boyd found a tickle over the airfield in his K6, patiently worked it, got 2000ft and headed southwest towards Bishops Castle in pursuit of a tasty looking black bottomed Cumulus. All he caught was 10 down and had just enough height to get back. And so it went on for the rest of the morning until at 1 o’clock, when, having just launched Robin Wilson for his second flight with Martin, the winch driver called a lunch break. Colin actually got the longest flight of the morning session with a very creditable nineteen minutes; where there is lift there is hope!

The K21 on final approach

Launching resumed at 14.09, and then suddenly pilots started to find lift; forty two minutes, fifty two minutes, two hours six, two hours three, two hours forty one, one hour thirty one, the log book told its own story. And then back to single figures…. For some an exhilarating and rewarding day, for others deep frustration and too much time on the ground. Time to adjourn to the bar and reflect on the day.

There was always tomorrow…… or so we thought!

Wednesday 20th April, The Wicked Witch of the East

An easterly wind at Dartmoor, especially one due east gusting 20-25 knots, would have DGS members rushing to set up the field and rig, but not so on the Long Mynd. A launch to the east would be short, downhill, across the runway, and with no options in the event of a launch failure; so if you live in Shropshire it’s a good excuse for a lie-in.

A day out at RAF Cosford

With the forecast for the wind to strengthen into the afternoon and following day, and rain expected on Friday,but with the surplus of optimism that all glider pilots must have to stay sane, we delayed a final decision on the day until late morning. Eventually, though, we had to acknowledge the obvious - flying for the week was over. Good excuse for a club outing. RAF Cosford was just thirty minutes away, with free entry into one of the best aircraft museums in the country this was an opportunity not to be missed. We would all rather have been flying, but this was a decent second best.

The weather at Cosford was positively balmy but returning to the Mynd it was still blowing an ominous easterly gale, so we had, after all, made the best of the day.

There was a final evening at the Crown, Wentnor, where the Mike Bennett’s Challenge had Simon Collier and Colin Boyd tied together and engaging in what looked like a strange mating ritual to get free - much to the amusement of the local clientele (never go drinking with they Dartmoor lads!) and the expedition was over.

Well behaved as always

The next morning we went our separate ways; not as much flying as we would have wished, but then there never is. A lot of good memories, precious memories, and the promise of next year.

Roger Appleboom