The scene on arrival at
the airfield could not have been more English: Colin Boyd’s immaculate red
Triumph TR4, together with Leith Whittington’s superbly crafted Slingsby T-51
Dart R, set against a sky full of lenticulars – what a way to start St George’s
Day!
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| A Triumph TR4, a Slingsby Dart and a sky full of lenticulars... what more could you ask for? |
With a steady south-easterly
blowing (see photo), the challenge was to get the airfield switched round asap
in order to take advantage of these conditions (a quick look at the clouds revealing
at least three systems at various heights).
By a little after 1100 we were underway, with potential new member Dom
March in the front seat of the K-13, but the classic area between winch and
sugar factory failed to deliver, although a little lift was found in the valley
between the airfield and Brent Tor church.
Dom’s second launch, to a height of less than 1,000ft, found nothing but
strong sink, by which time it was clear that, as predicted, the wind was
beginning to swing through south to SW’ly.
Not wishing to subject anyone to a downwind launch or landing, it was
decided to change ends for a second time and thus, even though the operation
went flawlessly, it wasn’t until what most would consider to be lunchtime (ie.
1pm) that we eventually got into a rhythm.
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| Windsock at start of day: definitely a SE’ly. |
By which time the look
and feel of the day had completely changed, the warm sunshine and lenticulars
being replaced by cool grey cumulus that had us reaching for our fleeces and
coats. This didn’t prevent convection
however, as after his third launch Dom was treated to the view from 2,700ft
(about 300ft shy of cloudbase), courtesy of a thermal that grew in classic
fashion all the way up (17 mins) and took an equal amount of time to descend
from. Our second visitor/temp member was
Nigel Aldred who, on holiday locally from his home club at Camphill, managed a
respectable 15 mins scratching over the church on his first launch, flying two
complete circuits (including landings) thereafter. Early riser Joe Nobbs (first seen on site at
8:30 AM!) then flew three check flights (under complete cloud cover),
followed by Junior trainee Ben Caverhill, before our third visitor/potential
new member of the day, Johnn Knight climbed aboard the K-13… Johnn, who is a lapsed PPL holder with a
great deal of experience bush flying in Zimbabwe and Oz, found the engineless
4-minute experience “…quite exhilarating…” and promises to be back.
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| Junior member Ben Caverhill checks K-13 HXP after the move to the east end. |
So, although we logged
only 16 launches overall (including two for Leith in his Dart, one of which was
13 mins..!) we have potentially
gained two new trainees, plus one (hopefully) taking positive vibes back to
Camphill (but not before Nigel returns on Wednesday, if the weather holds…) and
so it was all well worth the effort.
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| Strange cloudscape to the South of the airfield at the end of the day. |
Thanks go to Dave
Parker, Colin Boyd, and Joe Nobbs for winching, and to the rest of the crew for
being responsive and flexible throughout (the ‘visitors’ chairs being occupied
only by visitors for most of the time…)
Martin Cropper
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