Dartmoor Gliding News-Sunday 25th June 2018

They say things always happen in threes, and as the day progressed it looked like the saying is true. The first job of the day was to open the hangar doors. This gave us event number one. One of the wheels on of the doors had broken, thus preventing the doors from being opened. After a bit of searching around a spare wheel was found. Some blocks were found to support the door and the wheel replaced.

The offending wheel.

The next task was to put up a windsock at the western end. Event number two. Unable to attach the windsock to the pole, caused us to jury rig a piece of cord. This enabled the windsock to be raised. More about event three later.

We set about getting all the aircraft out of the hangar and readying the airfield for a good days flying. Our one day course student was Christopher Woodruffe who flew with me. He had to leave after 3 flights to go and care for his wife who is laid up at the moment. He will return shortly to complete the rest of his flights.

Christopher Woodruffe

Our other visitor was returning two trial flight candidate Terry Mansell. His first visit resulted in a rather short flight and not able to complete the second. Todays second flight resulted in a soaring flight of 22 minutes with me. He was very delighted with this picking out a lot of familiar locations due to the good visibility.

Terry Mansell

This encouraged the solo pilots to pull their gliders to the font of the launch queue. Roger Applebloom in his K6, 2 hours 20 minutes. Colin Boyd in the K8, 52 minutes. Andy Davey in his Zugvogel 2 hours 53 minutes longest flight of the day.

The lift locally was only short lived and our other solo pilots had to be content with extended circuits. Ed Borlase and Dave Downton in the K8. Josef Nobbs and Martin Broadway in the Zugvogel. Our newest solo pilot David Westcott had a couple of solo flights in the K13 after a check flight with me.

And to event three. On one of the retrieves, a loop developed on one drum of ML1. This resulted in the air line being fractured and rendered that drum out of action. We continued using the remaining drum whilst Phil Hardwick jury rigged a line to enable the cable to be wound in. In the mean time our engineering team of Martin, Colin and Phil brought ML2 on line which required swapping the batteries from the Gus winch and freeing a shackle from the rollers.

Only 19 flights today with 6 hours 56 minutes flying time. An average of 21 minutes a flight. Thanks to everyone for their winching, retrieving, engineering skills and general help running the field.

Peter Howarth