The club has restarted limited flying for licenced ( and current ) pilots flying solo only. 2 seat flying will commence soon.
The forecast for today looked very encouraging with the wind from the NE 10-15 knots; no rain. Looking at the atmospheric sounding showed windspeed increasing with height and a sharp inversion at around 3500 ft QNH. This gave an excellent chance for "wave" conditions.
Arriving at the airfield confirmed these predictions, The sky was full of interesting looking wave bars and the trailer park was a blur of activity as the pilots assembled their gliders ready for the day. The private grid ended up as Astir, Twin Astir, Discus, Open Cirrus, ASW20, and Zugvogel 3B. The club fielded K13 G-CHXP with the SF27 on standby. Sensibly the K8 was left in the hangar.
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Rigging well underway. The first aircraft is the Zugvogel 3B
with the Open Cirrus and Discus behind |
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| Early view to the east with a good solid wave bar and a ragged one overhead |
Mike Jardine was first to launch in his Astir and promptly disappeared for 1hour and 5 minutes coming back only to let syndicate partner, Rick Wiles, to have a flight ( 1hr 45 minutes ).
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| Mike in the Astir launching into a good sky |
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| Mike climbing well ( 5knots?) just over 3000ft.... |
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| .... and landing again. |
So what was the flying like? Well let's have a look at my own flight. After Roger, one of my syndicate partners, had a quick half hour and, thanks to Andy, my other syndicate partner, who let me fly next, I got the Zugvogel 3B on line. For those who do not know the 3B is a vintage wooden glider dating back to the 1960's with 17metre wings and surprisingly good performance with delightful handling.
The launch was low as I had probably launched in the down going part of the wave. With just about 850 ft I did not have much time to find some lift. Pushing forward through fairly light rotor turbulence there was some smooth air with 0 on the variometer. I turned south and managed a short run with the vario showing just 0.5 knots up ( 50 ft per minute ). Turning north along the same run took me to Mary Tavy still at 0.5 knots. This was going to need some patience. After a couple more short beats I flew through an area where the lift was much stronger at 2.5 knots. The area was very small ( possibly a wave enhanced thermal?). So I turned very steeply to stay centred in the best bit and I was off, climbing well. After reaching 1500ft I was able to track north and south along the wave bar now marked by the cloud above and slightly west of me. The lift varied but I was now seeing 2-3 knots + on the averager. Excellent.
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| Above the clouds ( the wings are VERY dirty already ) |
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Approaching Meldon Reservoir.
Interesting that the clouds north of the moor are in lines east west.
Another wave system? Why didn't I go and test it? |
In what seemed like no time I had reached 3500 ft and was now looking down on the cloudscape. To the east there were 2 more wave bars, so with enough height to arrive above the cloud I could not resist and headed east at 65 knots through sink and rotor arriving in front of the next wave bar cloud where the lift was once again easy to use allowing me much longer beats from just south of Tavistock to Sourton in the north. I used this wave bar to climb to 4500 ft QFE (above the airfield) and then set off easterly once more to the most forward wave bar. The lift here was good and took me to just over 5000ft QFE ( nearly 6000ft above sea level ) and allowed the beat to extend a bit further being overhead Meldon Reservoir in the north. To the south the bar had a large gap just south of Tavistock. In the distance I could see where the wave bar reappeared but decided that, as Andy had not yet flown, risking a landout if it did not work would not be very friendly. Time to return to the airfield. A full airbrake decent just east of Mary Tavy was surprisingly quick. This was followed by a lively but uneventful circuit through the rotor back to the runway. Total flight time 1 1/2 hours.
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| Me on final approach |
I later found out from Richard Roberts ( Discus ) that the gap in the wave was mostly zero all the way south and that the wave clouds in the distance did indeed work and allowed him to explore the Plymouth and South Hams areas during his 2 hour 5 minute flight which was the longest flight of the day. I will know for next time.
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Steve in the Open Cirrus was looking down from his thermal.
The K13 is on the ground at the launchpoint. ( left centre )
The ASW20 is on final approach ( centre ) and
the Zugvogel with Andy flying is on base leg ( right 3/4 up photo ) |
What a day. 22 launches in total with 1 in excess of 2 hrs, 4 better than I1/2 hours, 4 more better than 1 hour, 2 around 3/4 hour, and 2 more around 1/2 hours. A lot of these flights were limited deliberately to allow others to fly. Average flight time for all flights today was 3/4 hour.
A good Dartmoor wave day enjoyed with friends.
Steve
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