Although the balmy temperatures of last week are now just a distant memory the forecast still looked favourable. Sunshine with possible showers. The forecasts differed on the wind direction, varying between East and South. Most agreed the wind strength would be 10 rising to 15 knots in the afternoon with possible gusty conditions later.
The DGS pilots seemed to think that this would be a good day. The club aircraft of 2*K13 and the K8 were joined by 2*Astir CS, Steve Fletchers's Open Cirrus and Richard Roberts' beautiful Discus. The airtfield has dried out considerably with just a few soft patches to keep us on our toes. This was helped enormously by Scratch and the application of the roller both before and after flying. Thanks mate.
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| Today's Grid looks very untidy. "Keep them in line gentlemen" |
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| Tee shirt and shorts were in evidence |
Initially, flights were extended circuits in the seemingly bouyant air showing some wave influence but this quickly improved with lots of flights over half an hour in wave enhanced thermals. The longest flight was 1 hour and 1 minute by Allan Holland in the K8 who only returned to make the aircraft available for someone else to fly. One interesting technique was to approach the downwind side of the showers passing through the area where large areas of rising air could be found. While demonstrating this to Matt Fletcher, today's One Day Course Candidate, I did mistime it a bit. I had intended to land and have enough time to walk the aircraft back to the launch point BEFORE the shower arrived. However, less than 1 minute after touchdown, it rained and I got very wet on the walk back in the shower which stopped 5 minutes later.
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| One Day Course Candidate Matt Fletcher |
As well as One Day Course candidate Matt, we were also joined by visitor Robert Brown who enjoyed a soaring flight with Mike Jardine.
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| Visitor Robert Brown with Instructor Mike |
The club training was handled by Rick and Mike with a cameo appearance from CFI Mark Courtney It was interesting to see that, after a couple of check flights, Mike Bennett flew solo and promptly enjoyed a soaring flight in DMX. By far the most encouraging flight today was Ged Nevisky, flying for the first time in almost a year after his medical challenges. Ged flew with Mark and had a thoroughly enjoyable flight.
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| Ged can just be seen in the back seat with Mark in front |
A good day in which we completed 34 flights and proved that a K13 with 2 pilots could easily out soar a Discus. Who Knew?
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| The Discus returning to the launch point. Unseen is the K13 soaring above |
Steve
2 comments:
Thanks for that👍😂
The smugness was noted on the day🙈
Awesome blog. Great news from Dartmoor.
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