Dartmoor Gliding News-Tuesday 1st September 2020

Today we welcomed Mike Sloggett to DGS to run the field. With a promising RASP Forecast there was plenty of activity preparing both club aircraft and private. First task was to swap ends with the windsock indicating a definite easterly component.

Richard Roberts was setting a short task to try and help some solo pilots with soaring and post solo flying. He and Ed Borlase prepared K13 DMX to try and lead around a 50km task of Callington, Roadford and back to DGS. Joining them was Steve Fletcher in his Open Cirrus, Hugh Gascoyne in his K6, Andy Davey in his Libelle and Phil Hardwick in his Astir.

Richard and Ed waiting to launch
Hugh set to go
Steve ready to fly
Phil and Andy discussing the task.
After taking off and soaring for a while, Richard decided that the original task would not be possible due to poor conditions towards Callington. They made a call to go for a pre agreed fallback task of Roadford, Okehampton and back.

Unfortunately Hugh struggled with the conditions and returned after 53 minutes  and Richard & Ed were forced to return after 1 hour 8 minutes. Andy and Steve returned after 1 hour 21 minutes & 2 hours and 13 minutes respectively also without completing the task.

Steve following a line of energy.

Phil managed to complete the task after getting low at one point with a possible field selected, but managing a long slow climb back to above 2000ft and then getting back.

Phil on approach.

Meanwhile Mike was kept busy flying with trainees John O’Connell an Peter Mountford. Both made good progress with their general flying.

John checking the K13 before flying.

Also to fly with Mike was Colin Boyde. He started an made good progress towards re-soloing with two flights.

Colin and Mike returning to the launch point.

Malcolm and Gavin made use of the SF27 unfortunately no managing soaring flights.

Malcolm waiting in the SF27.

A busy day flying with 25 flights. Thank you to winch drivers and retrieves for supplying good service of cables particularly to get the pilots on task away quickly.

Peter Howarth

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