Wing in Ground Effect – what's that all about? Well that's what Chris Owen
was wondering, but had to wait until the end of the day for his voyage of
discovery...
At 9am, with cloudbase (just) managing to skeeter over the tops of
the tors, and relatively benign forecasts from the Met Office and RASP; plus two
K-13s being back in harness (huge thanks to Colin Boyd and the team for getting
HXP through it's CofA last Wednesday), there was everything to play for today.
With 'Light Airs' characterising the wind at the start, we set up for a westerly
launch, which proved correct as the wind eventually settled in the NW'ly
quadrant, remaining light throughout.
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| One Day Course student Phil Selwood from Shebbear. |
Our One Day Course student was Phil Selwood, a gunsmith from Shebbear, who
flew with Peter Howarth (see photo) and, as a radio controlled model glider
pilot, caught on quickly. Peter also flew with Jill Bracey in K-13 HXP (see
photo), whilst club trainees Jeff Cragg, Dave Downton and Ed Borlase flew in
K-13 DMX.
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| Visitor Jill Bracey flew with Peter Howarth. |
So, what of the conditions? Well, initially, everything went to plan:
the sun broke through, the cloudbase lifted, little white Cu began to populate
the skyscape, even beginning to organise themselves in cloud-streets as, in the
words of Chris Owen, “I flew through pockets of lift, managing 2,300' QFE,
achieving a very pleasing 37 mins flight time”. Chris's flight took place at
around 2:30pm, ie. one hour after Adrian Irwin's Flight of the Day Award winning
53 mins, and shortly after which a door to further soaring seemed to shut. Which
was difficult to account for since, as the background in our photo of Leith
Whittington's superb Dart 17 shows, the sky was still peppered with cumulus, as
a hard edge of cloud formed to the south and east of the field. If this was a
convergence then a. it didn't generate any lift and b. it must have come from
the north coast. What ever it was, climbs which before lunch had been smooth and
easy became very narrow and difficult to work.
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Is that a convergence?
The afternoon sky behind Leith Whittington’s superb Dart 17R. |
That said, we got through the
Flying List and so, at about 5:30pm, came Chris's chance to experiment with Wing
in Ground Effect. Here's what he had to say; ”Often reading about ground effect,
I was in for a treat. Searching my memory for the technique, from about 600 feet
I made my final turn at the usual point. With a fairly steep approach levelling
out at 15 feet or so with a touch of airbrake to control the descent the K-8
seemed to float on a cushion of air - ground effect - until a very gentle touch
down nearly adjacent to the hangar path. Marvellous, a magic carpet ride!”
And so with just a quick burst valve on one of the wheels of the green Disco
thrown in to remind us that this is a gliding club where the untoward is regular
and innovation often required to fix it (see trolley jack in photo), by 7pm we
were able to call it a (quite rewarding) day.
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| The green Disco is ‘logged on’ to the trolley jack... |
Martin Cropper
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