Dartmoor Gliding News-Saturday 6th April 2019

Driving to the airfield today, there were several clues as to the day ahead. There were signs that Dartmoor was setting off wave in the easterly winds; various tell tale cloud formations could be seen. Worryingly, there were areas were the visibility was poor but this later proved to be a red herring. In places the wind seemed very gusty, completely different to the balmy zephyrs on the coast. There were no signs of precipitation anywhere. Good.

At the airfield, the strength of the wind early on was surprising with gusts almost trying to blow me off my feet. A bit different to the 10 knots easterly with gusts to 20 of the forecast. So the K8's were left in the hangar and the K13's were taken to the launch point. Rick and I decided that the best way to proceed was to take a quick circuit together to check out the conditions. After a false start with a winch power failure and a swap to the winch that Scratch had spent some considerable time cleaning the fuel system of, we flew the test circuit. It was rough on the launch. The air at launch height was turbulent with rotors everywhere but there was definitely some wave in amongst it. The approach needed careful attention.

Cap cloud in view in the NE breeze later in the day

At this point I made the decision ( with regret ) that the conditions were unsuitable to conduct today's One Day Course with candidate Charles Fowler who had travelled quite a long way to fly with us. He will return another day.

Charlie and family trying out the K13 for size.
Loojing forward to flying with you soon,

Rick decided that he would fly again with him as the handling pilot this time as I had flown the first one, after which he considered that the conditions were safe enough for club pilots to fly with him in the K13. This led to a series of circuits with pilots unable to exploit the wave. Curious.

As the afternoon wore on, he conditions  calmed down considerably. This allowed us to launch our privateers, Steve Fletcher in the Open Cirrus and Roger Green in his ASW20 who hooked into the wave and promptly disappeared for nearly 1 1/2 hours only returning by airbraking down from the top of the wave a very low 2300 feet above the airfield. Great flying Roger.

Roger. Climbing strongly at 2100 feet

Looking towards to moor at 2300 feet

By 4pm the conditions had calmed enough for the K8 to be brought out which was promptly flown for 23 and 43 minutes by Malcom Wilton-Jones and Allan Holland respectively in the late afternoon thermal bubbles as the wave become unusable once more as the wind moved around to the north east.

Our thanks to everyone who helped of course, but a special mention for Scratch for his work on the winch fuel system which worked flawlessly all day and for Rick who endured some really rough conditions in the back seat of the K13 to enable everyone to fly.

Steve