It’s great, isn’t it when, without prompting, everyone seems to be singing from the same hymn-sheet? Well, milling around the trailer park/rigging area this morning, that was the case as all appeared to agree that: “This cloudbase is going to shoot up after 10 o’clock” and “It’ll be a light north-westerly, straight up and down the runway”, and “RASP gives it 1½-2 by lunchtime”. It generates a sense of corporate optimism when everyone, armed with the same information, is driving towards the same target. The pity was, however, that the words on the hymn-sheet didn’t match the tune struck up by the weather.
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| Line-up of single-seaters awaiting a break in the cloud. |
First to launch into the ‘light north-westerly’ was trainee Mark Elliott, who moved on today to flying the entire launch. Well done, Mark. Then came Geoff Cole, who discovered that the wooden paddles in the nose are there for a purpose, integrating the rudder into his turn co-ordination.
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| Trainee Geoff Cole and Martin Cropper waiting for the up slack. |
Then it was time to fling a flock of (well, four) single-seaters into space, with Steve Fletcher (Open Cirrus CGY) being at the front of the grid. Steve said: “As the sky started to look like I might stay up I took a launch. Normally when I come off the wire, I like to put the undercarriage up and trim the aircraft before searching for lift, no time for all that as I was launched straight into a 4-knot thermal. Undercarriage and trim were sorted as I established myself in the core. Straight up to cloud base at 2,000 ft and I was away for 1 hour and 5 mins landing after the thermals started to break up. A little milestone reached as I passed through 200 hours in gliding during the flight”. Well done, Steve! Would that all subsequent flights were as good as his.
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| Ed Borlase gets back into the groove in the club K-8. |
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| K-13 HXP on approach from the east end. |
Peter Howarth and Rich Roberts gave it their best, with 45 and 25 minutes apiece, but the sky and conditions did not meet their early promise, as the wind swung to the north and the sink increased to 4-6 kts down. That didn’t prevent Andy Davey from chipping in a very respectable 29 minutes in his Libelle later in the afternoon, or for Ed Borlase to get back into the groove in the K-8. John Smith maintained currency whilst Ray Boundy (bit of a dark horse) found some strangely stationary, but at times strong, lift just to the south of the site which enabled him to ‘hover’ at around the 1,100ft mark for 14 minutes.
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| Andy Davey looking for promise prior to launching in Libelle |
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| ...and away he goes! |
With everyone flown by a relatively early 4:30pm, and no change being evident in the sky (no-one enjoys flying around in 4-6 down with an occasional quarter-circle of half-up) we decided that we had reached the final chorus of this particular day’s hymn-sheet, and put our books away, grateful for a safe and enjoyable day in each other’s company.
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Exemplary parking demonstrated by the Tavistock 'Model' Flying Club,
as observed by Peter Howarth.
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| Directions to the airfield by air: find the scrapyard on the right |
Martin Cropper
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