Dartmoor Gliding News-Saturday 6th October 2018

As September gives way to October. the decline into Autumn continues. The weather today gave a very low cloudbase, and a strong, gusty wind from the north ie. straight across the runway. Even without the forecast 90+% chance of rain (which never materialised, interestingly) this was going to be a non flying day.

Looking towards Brentor Church from the NW corner.
The wind was very strong
Arriving at the airfield we were met by a puzzle. Despite the fact that everything was locked up and secure, the water in the kettle was boiled and the generator was warm. Curious. Dartmoor's version of the Marie Celeste perhaps?  Once we found the note on the table the puzzle was solved. Mike Bennett had arrived much earlier than us and needed to return home.

After a cup of tea, it was time to plan out today's work. Rick used the time to catch up with briefings for trainee pilot David Archer. The remaining three of us decamped to the runway to investigate the cables on the ML2 winch. This had suffered a tangle on one of the drums and initially the idea was to add some more cable to replace that which was lost in the tangle. We decided to pull out both cables to check them first. Close inspection revealed that the cables were approaching the end of their useful life so the decision was made to replace both cables with new ones. Rick arrived at this point and between us we fitted the winch with 2 new cable and cut up and disposed of the old cables.

The ML2 in the NW corner to remove the old cables
Barry keeping and eye on the new cable being layed out ready to fit onto the winch 
Nice new cables
Meanwhile, in the clubhouse, David was working on the simulator. He replaced the controller which had giving poor jittery reponses with a brand new one. Problem solved. The simulator controls are once again silky smooth.
David working of the simulator controls
David testing his handiwork
Steve


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