Dartmoor Gliding News-Sunday 11th october 2020

 Last night’s Met Office forecast, of NW’ly 12-14kts, high cloudbase, for some reason got out the wrong side of bed this morning, traipsing in like some hoodie with the prospect of a shower at 1000, or possibly 1200, but, if we hadn’t taken the hint, definitely 1400 for the final flush..!  

A familiar sight…

OK, we thought, let’s fly what we see: whereupon having got new K-13 CCY to the launchpoint, it rained. In this respect AccuWeather proved very useful in showing the rain, as did the fact that you can now look out of the bus launch point windows and see the weather..! That makes it easy to (a) justify having another tea/coffee or (b) get out and wipe down the gliders.  

Dave Westcott acquaints himself with the cockpit of new K-13 CCY.

Takes up slack…

…gets away...

..and turns finals.

Which was exactly what we did, finally being able to make a start at 1130 with some check flights for Dave Westcott and Ed Borlase.  We then moved onto the trainee list.  Ray Boundy was keen to consolidate the aileron reversal exercises he started last week, whilst Karon and Chris Matten also wanted to get back in the sky after a two-week break.

Ray Boundy conducting pre-flight checks.

Ray Boundy rounding out.

By this time, the morning’s overcast had cleared, allowing the sun a chance to do its convective best.  As Karon found at the top of the launch where she ran into a line of energy between the winch and Brentor Church that sent her 100ft above launch height.  To say that it was narrow would be charitable, however, Karon managed three or four beats before being forced to re-join the circuit.  Sadly, husband Chris was unable to fly due to an inability to get his shins beneath the instrument panel of CCY: thankfully Colin Boyd pledged to take the panel and introduce its lower edge to a fretsaw, thus enabling Chris to (hopefully) sample CCY next week.  

Technical Inspector, Colin Boyd, making ‘ears’…

Colin then leapt into the front seat of CCY to give it a quick fling around: a bit of a busman’s holiday as it resulted in a shopping list of tasks to be completed during the week..!  And finally, Peter Howarth rose to the challenge of trying to sort out which clouds meant what, but was unable to..!  

Ed Borlase heads north over Brentor Church.

And so we started to pack the gliders away, with 10 training launches, 1 test flight and 1 almost soaring flight completed.  Thanks go to Rich Roberts who (having looked at the forecast) winched all day without flying.

Martin Cropper