Dartmoor Gliding News-Wednesday 25th October 2017

The Wednesday regulars turned up to help Colin and the sorcerers apprentice rig the K8 and Zugvogel. All went well but the Zugogel elevator linkage was a tad fiddly to say the least!

Colin then finished the CofA and ARC for  both aircraft which are now ready for test flying. A huge thank you to Colin and Dave for all their hard work getting these single seaters ready for flying.

"One Wheel on my wagon" or wing of my K8 in this case
At work assembling the K8
Whilst the weather was great with no wind and a lot of sun with high clouds the airfield was just too wet to fly. In addition the ruts across the middle of the airfield really need sorting as soon as the field dries enough.

As can be seen from these pictures you wouldn't want to cross these tracks with a glider. The field is currently too wet to roll them hopefully in a few days the soil will firm up enough for us to do some remedial work.

Tractor marks left by our farmer? Top soils and roller required
Steve Fletcher

Dartmoor Gliding News-Saturday 21st October 2017

We are in the grips of storm "Brian" with it's attendant high winds and torrential bouts of rain. The airfield is as wet as I have ever seen it. Needless to say the aircraft stayed firmly in the hangar.

Morning lecture
 All was not lost though. Not one to waste an opportunity, Instructor Rick Wiles presented a lecture to our attending trainees on the Symptoms Of the Approaching Stall. This was also attended by some experienced pilots hoping to refresh their knowledge.

Rick wrestling the Discovery brakes into submission
Later Rick, along with Safety Officer Scratch, were to be found in the hangar finishing the front brake refurbishment of the Gold Discovery which is now fully operational once more. Out on the airfield ( in the rain !!) Steve Raine and Mike Jardine spent time modifying the trailer equipment for their Astir CS - now that's dedication.

Chairman Martin and  Company Secretary Leith still smiling at the end of the meeting
By mid afternoon the committee has assembled for their meeting which stretched on until the early evening by which time it was raining hard once more. The amount of water racing out of the main gate was just unbelievable.
The  gateway river
Steve    

Dartmoor Gliding News-Wednesday 18th October 2017

Not the greatest of days weather wise with low cloud and a southerly breeze but the Wednesday regulars turned up optimistic as ever.

The "new" Zetor arrives
Colin and the sorcerers apprentice continued to work their magic on the K8 whilst Phil got up close and personal with our newly painted red Zetor tractor. Phil quickly appraised himself of the controls and was solo within no time at all.

Trying it for size Phil?
The sun put in a brief appearance and so we rigged the open cirrus just in time to see the sun go and the cloud base descend to about 600 feet! Not deterred we set up the field and sat at the launch point waiting for things to improve which they eventually did allowing some flying to take place.

Huge thanks from me to Phil Hardwick, Martin Broadway, Bob sansom, Peter Harvey and Allen Holland for launching me. Finally a plea for more members to turn up on Wednesdays please!

Steve Fletcher

Dartmoor Gliding News-Sunday 15th October 2017

Today was another day with low cloud early and with the winds to be slowly increasing to a forecast 15-20 Knots due south it was declared that today was going to be a non-flying day. A couple of our guests rang in to see if we were flying, so the voice Dave Downton set about re-booking all for another day.

We welcomed back Martin to the club after his short absence from flying. Hopefully you will fly next Sunday to regain your wings. So after cups of coffee and tea we looked for some jobs that needed doing. Roger had noticed that HXP was sitting rather low on its dolly. Investigation found that it indeed had a puncture. We set about swapping the wheel with a spare after it was found the existing tube was leaking from a previous repair and couldn’t be repaired.

Checking for leaks
After sorting HXP we took the glider out of the hangar and washed the mud off from the previous weekend’s flying.

 Colin arrived to check on the repair to the K8 wing with help from his apprentice.
Following more teas and coffees with lunch it was decided to pack away and head for home. Hopefully a better weekend weather next week.

Peter Howarth

Dartmoor Gliding News-Sunday 8th October 2017

Having driven from Plymouth in varying degrees of clear air and foggy stretches it was no surprise that the airfield was shrouded in fog. Roger and Richard were in the clubhouse preparing for the day by drinking tea. Shortly after Ed Borlase, Mark Jerman and Josef Nobbs (yes you read that correctly) turned up and discussions turned to, when is the fog going to clear. It was decided to be optimistic that the fog would clear sooner rather than later. So the small crew set about extracating the two seaters from the hangar and setting the airfield up ready to fly.

Gliders in the mist
About 10:30 it was decided the sky was clearing, so we towed the gliders to the east end to await the cloudbase to rise enough to start flying. First into the air was Mark Jerman and myself at 10:52 for a weather check flight. With virtually nil wind we achieved a 800ft launch. So we were off for the days flying.
Our first visitor was Paul Rendell from the Dartmoor News magazine. Paul and I had two flights, one of 8 minutes during which he took several photos and we talked about the club and other aspects of Dartmoor. Paul will be writing an article for the magazine and should feature in the January/February 2018 edition. I will confirm this at a later date.

Paul Rendell
 Our other visitors came in a steady flow. The first two were Leonie and Kevin Knight who flew with Richard. We had to shoe horn Kevin into the back seat or we would not have been able to fly him. Both enjoyed their flights.

Kevin Knight
Leonie Knight
Pamela Prades
Another visitor Pamela Prades also flew with Richard.

Our last visitors were David Lamb and David Hatton who both flew with Roger.

David Lamb
David Hatton
One family member who arrived with David Hatton was Chloe. She was very keen to sit in a glider which Ed oversaw and she also pestered her dad to have a flight. Arrangements were made for her to fly in the back seat with me in the front. She bravely got settled in the back, only at the last minute was even braver to speak up and say she didn’t want to fly. We presented her with a certificate for being brave and look forward to her coming back when she is a little bigger and braver.

Brave Chloe with me
 I was kept busy with club flying. After Mark’s first flight, his second was a high cable break practice. He also had two more flights at the end of the day including a hangar flight. All were handled well. New member Lee Morgan paid us a visit instead of his usual Saturday visits. He progressed with a demonstration of adverse yaw and started trying to turn the glider and flying straight and level. Good progress was made, well done Lee. Josef had a couple of flights with Roger to maintain currency, flying from the front seat and then trying out the back seat.

What about our other star solo pilot, ED? He had a quick check flight with me and then took to the air for a couple of solo flights. His second flight was the longest of the day. A very successful 12 minutes. We had difficulty stopping him talking about it for quite a while.

Ed waiting to launch for the longest flight of the day.
A big thank you to Roger and Richard for Winching. Also Josef, Alan Holland and Mark for retrieving. Although only 22 flights today, everything went smoothly considering the small amount of members present. All flew who wanted to. I must also say a big thank you to Scratch who finished off the repair to the entrance without flying.

Peter Howarth

Dartmoor Gliding News-Saturday 7th October 2017

Another rainy day at the airfield
 Arriving at the airfield in the rain I was immediately reminded of The Sam Cooke song "Chain Gang". Scratch ( Dene Hitchen) had organised a group of members to help him with the repairs to the site entrance which had been washed out by the water running off the site every time it rained. After digging out the damaged area yesterday, a heculean task in itself, the plan was to fill the ditch with concrete today. The weather had other ideas. The rain was once again running through the entrance and would have damaged the new concrete so this task would have to wait until tomorrow.

The damaged entrance prepared for new concrete
The Dartmoor chain gang working harmoniously as usual
Elsewhere, Rick was working on the Gold Discovery, replacing the damaged front drive shaft which will enable 4WD once again. This will be essential for the coming season. During the course of this repair it was discovered that the front disk brakes were seized, so arrangemts were made to get a caliper rebuild kit to be fitted next week.

Do you recognise this man? Rick assumes his usual position under a vehicle
Although there could be no flying today, that did not mean no training today. In the clubhouse Instructor Mike Jardine put David Archer through his paces in the simulator.

Mike and David giving the simulator a workout
Hoping for better weather soon.

Steve 

Dartmoor Gliding News-Wednesday 4th October 2017

The forecast on Monday was for Wednesday to possibly be a good soaring day but as the week progressed so the forecast changed for the worse. Weds morning the wind was more southerly than the predicted westerly but as the day progressed it veered round so we eventually had about 15 knots straight down the runway from the west. As it was a pilots only day there weren't many of us and Colin and the voice of Dartmoor were buried under a mound of paperwork so just 4 of us decided to fly.

A pilot's eye view.
Bob Sansom, Phil Hardwick and Robin Wilson helped me rig my open cirrus and then we got the twin astir out. Allen Holland then arrived and we set about flying. Whilst quite cloudy with very little sun hitting the ground Robin and Phil managed to stay up in the twin astir for 24 mins but as the thermals only seemed to be close to the active ranges it was difficult to ride them for long before being blown close to the boundary and needing to fly back westwards and out of the thermal.

The view from the back seat of the Twin Astir - Robin is in the front seat
Equipped with the knowledge of where to find a thermal from their exploratory flight I managed to ride the thermal in my cirrus for 27 mins before losing it altogether. The thermals then eluded us but we all got a chance to fly as ballast in the back of the Twin Astir from where I took these pictures.

Thanks to everyone who turned up, just enough to get the airfield up and running and some good flying.

Steve Fletcher

Dartmoor Gliding News-Saturday 30th September 2017

Surely September would go out on a high note. Watching the weather ( pilot's 2nd hobby ) for the week before there seemed to be a pattern; One day with a weak ridge of high pressure giving settled, pleasant weather, followed by a day with a weak frontal system giving low cloud and rain. At the start of the week it looked like Saturday would the good day but alas the fronts sped up and we ended up with the unflyable weak front instead. Regular readers will know that we have been here before.

Gordon and Lee discussing flying matters.
So, no flying but on with the myriad of tasks required to maintain that airfield and it's infrastructure. Before the work got underway, Instructor Gordon Dennis gave a very interesting lecture on Dark Matter to divert everyone's attention from flying. Gordon then returned from cosmic matters to flying giving new trainee pilot Lee Morgan his undivided attention.

Rick washing the mower before stripping it down.
Meanwhile, the mower was collected from the airfield, thoroughly cleaned and then disassembled ready for winter storage. Barry brought the launch hut down to the hangar and completed some repairs around the door.

A study in concentration; Barry fixing the launch hut door
So that was September then.

Steve 

Dartmoor Gliding News-Saturday 23rd September 2017

A first glance this looked liked an ideal autumn training day with a clear blue sky. Step outside though and the gusty SE wind became all too apparent. The wind was 15knots at times with some considerable gusts. Regular readers of this blog will know that, with this wind strength and direction, approaches would be best described as "character forming" or perhaps challenging. Unfortunately this lead to the decision to cancel the fully booked air experience programme.

An innocent looking day
K13 G-DDMX completes another high energy approaches
We welcomed two new club members today, Lee Morgan who has decided to learn to fly with us and Mark Jermen, an experienced glider pilot, who has recently moved into the area. Both enjoyed their first flights with us in the gusty conditions. Everyone who wanted to fly did so in one of the K13's with either Mike Jardine or Rick Wiles, today's instructors.

Mark Jermen with Rick Wiles
Lee Morgan and Mike ready to go flying.
A frustrating day when it could have been so nice.

Steve