If the weather was a prisoner-of-war you can imagine that, after the initial pleasantries (Name: “Weather”; Rank: “High” Number: “42”) the answer to “And what are you going to be like, today?” would be “I Can’t Answer That Question!” From which the tabloid-style forecasters at RASP would paint pictures of burgeoning cumulus, straight down the runway winds and 2.5 Stars or more rating from 1230 onwards. All of course to be accompanied by a NOTAM warning of AIRPROX with low flying craft of a pink, porcine nature… Today’s weather definitely appeared to have attended one of those Resistance to Interrogation courses that take place at RAF St Mawgan, as it steadfastly refused to tell why the buoyant clouds we could see upwind ran out of ‘puff’ as they approached Brentor.
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| Early morning mist enveloped the airfield. |
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| Crossed wings salute the return of the K-13 from its first flight. |
So, whilst soaring was going to be a challenge (but see later…), training went ahead as normal. Well, normal once the sun had managed to prise the ambient temperature sufficiently far from the dew point to dispel the early morning mist. Returning to solo member Dave Westcott performed some useful slow flying/stalling exercises which, with his eventualities training last weekend, enabled him to regain solo status. Ray Boundy, found guilty of ‘reading a book’ during the week, used his time to build the diagonal leg into his circuits (they didn’t have ‘diagonal legs’ in Ray’s day) which he found very productive.
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| Solo again, Dave Westcott celebrates by mustering his fingers and thumbs (well he is a potter…) |
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| And holds off in the K-8 with flair. |
This was also the first Sunday on which we benefitted from use of the bus as a launchpoint. What an improvement! For the first time it’s not like living in a caravan – true there were teething problems but by using the driver’s seat for the log-keeper the operation worked well.
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| The Twin Astir sharing a thermal with the K-8. |
And so to the soaring. As the first paragraph indicates, there should have been some – but could we find it? We were all very pleased to welcome long standing member Malcolm Roberts back to the club today. Malcolm, who battled against the tourist traffic in Cornwall to get here, had planned to join syndicate partner Phil Hardwick for a pleasant day in their Twin Astir. Well, pleasant no doubt it was but also brief as their returns to terra firma were never very long after the departures.
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| Ed Borlase squeezes another couple of turns from the only cloud which was working. |
Later in the afternoon the wind veered from NW’ly to N’ly, and gusts increased in strength. After two failed attempts that gave a fleeting glimpse of where it was, perhaps this was what enabled Ed Borlase to actually connect for more than two turns, on the northern boundary just west of the launchpoint. Indeed, he continued turning beneath a scrappy cloud for another eight orbits, thus enabling us to say: “ten out of ten for tenacity, Ed!” Hugh Gascoyne in his K-6 also had success in the same area, but fell back to earth just four minutes short of Ed’s Flight of the Day…16 minutes! Ed put his success down to a herd of three John Deere tractors working a field at the bottom of the valley which, in light of there being no other factor, might just have given sufficient oomph to propel both the K-8 and Twin Astir upwards sufficiently long enough for Ed to gather the accompanying photos.
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| Hugh Gascoyne gets aloft in his K-6. |
Thanks go to winch drivers Phil Hardwick, Peter Howarth and Mike Bennett, and also to Chris Matten for his log keeping/launchpoint comms.
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| Three wheels on my wagon - as one of the quad’s wheels ‘goes its own way’. |
We also had the first divorce on the airfield (well the first in living memory). Three quarters of the way down the centreline track, the right half-shaft and rear wheel of one of the quadbikes decided to part company and, shooting off on its own, left the bike marooned in the middle of the airfield. With typical gliding club resourcefulness, one of the glider dollies was brought up from the hangar to support the wheel-less corner and within ten minutes we were back in operation (albeit one quad bike down). So who was riding the quad bike at the time of the incident? “I Can’t Answer That Question!”
Martin Cropper
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