Those of you who have had to wait-in for relatives, friends, bosses or neighbours to arrive/turn up at an expected time, only to receive calls of increasing apology/implausible excuses as the hours pass will know how we felt on the airfield today. In our case the very well expected guests were Mr and Mrs Thunder-Shower, but were they going to arrive at 10am, midday, 2pm or 4pm? Initially expecting them to meet an ETA of 1000 we were understandably reluctant to get the gliders out but, with nothing more than lines of grey streaming from the SE over the tor tops by 1030 we set up for an easterly run.
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| Karon Matten and Martin Cropper preparing for flight. |
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| Karon making use of reduced sink over Brentor Church. |
Our understanding was that this was going to be a trainees’ day: get in what you could while being ready to retreat to shelter in the launchpoint if/when necessary. Karon Matten went first and, finding some reduced sink in a S’ly line between Brentor church and the airfield, achieved Flight of the Day on her first launch (minutes amounting to slightly fewer than the fingers of two hands).
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| K-13 HXP launches into a grey sky. |
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| Karon gets the airbrakes open in reaction to a simulated low launch failure. |
After two further launches came husband Chris, but his session was interrupted by rain (not thunder), causing a 1½ hour delay (including a false start) and hence he handed the baton to Ray Boundy. Ray’s flights were, not surprisingly, enhanced by his ability to recall points for development from last week’s flights and hence his circuits and final turns were a beauty to behold. We then flung Ed Borlase into the front seat for three launches (two of which were simulatedly interrupted…). By that time, using the coin-tossing theory that, having so far failed to have turned up, there was increasing probability that Mr and Mrs T-S might arrive sometime soon we decided we’d better get the K-13 back down to the hangar. As it turned out they seemed to take a wrong turning out of Exeter Services which caused them to pass us by. Good job we didn’t sit on the ground waiting for them, then..!
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| Ray Boundy rounding out in the K-13. |
So a day when the miserly pundits got the pleasure of keeping their money in their pockets whilst the trainees got some very real benefit from flying in what were unpromisingly grey, but actually quite benign conditions and hence maintain currency – and improve – their flying skills.
Thanks go especially to Peter Settings-Howarth for not only winching throughout but also for getting four strips of the airfield grass mown before anyone else had turned up..!
Martin Cropper
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