“It’s entirely up to you…” were the concluding words of the brief from the winch driver who, having laid the cables from east to west, as instructed, delivered the news that the wind was now more from the west at the winch end than the east. To say that the Duty Instructor’s thanks were slightly hesitant at this news might be described as an overstatement. Having already waited over two hours for cloudbase to lift above the church and the wind to settle, as predicted, in the north-east, clear direction had been given to take the gliders to the west end and set up the old launchpoint in readiness for a busy day’s flying. Now we had a pair of cables, plus a clutch of gliders, at the wrong end of the airfield, just as Gavin Short could be heard effusively welcoming our first visitors to “Dartmoor Gliding”, inviting them to take a seat! And so we decided to ping off two K-13s, one with Peter Howarth solo, the other with visiting reciprocal RNGSA member Richard Lovell-Burt flying dual, down to the other end, whilst the long-suffering team packed everything up (including visitors) and proceeded to the east end. A good start!
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| Visitor Luke Portch with Gavin Short. |
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| Visitor Tiffany Gale, with instructor Gavin. |
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| Tiffany’s partner, Andrew Symes, with Gavin. |
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| Ross Simmons gives a thumbs-up before flying with Hugh Gascoyne. |
Once underway, in promising conditions, business proceed apace. Gavin took our fist visitor, newly promoted detective Luke Portch, into the air in K-13 CCY, while Richard L-B was given some check flights in HXP. Hugh Gascoyne then took over the rear cockpit of CCY to fly his F&F visitor, Ross Simmons, with an impressive soaring flight of 18 minutes, while the training focus shifted to new junior member Freddie Cotton. Gavin then resumed the rear-seat position to fly with visitor Tiffany Gale who, with partner Andrew Syms, had travelled from Falmouth to fly with us, while Ray Boundy maintained currency in HXP. New to Sunday trainee Mohammed Khouribich rounded off the trainee roster, while - a bit later than expected after his spell on the winch - Peter Howarth converted to the SF-27. Peter remarked that “once you’d got past the twitchiness of the all-flying elevator, the SF is a sleek wooden ship…very nice to fly”. Richard L-B then took the last cable by soloing HXP, concluding with a hangar landing.
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RNGSA reciprocal member Richard Lovell-Butt
ready to go with Martin Cropper for a check flight. |
So what of those ‘promising’ conditions? Our photos show some nice looking cu which, at height, seemed to be aligned NE-SW (see first paragraph…). Whilst managing a flight of almost 1½ hours in his Discus, Rich Roberts’s verdict was “with cloudbase at no more than 2,300ft agl, and inconsistencies in where the lift was around the clouds, it was not an easy day,” (he just failed to add that, having failed to fly yesterday, he enjoyed every difficult minute of it!)
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Rich Roberts’s view from 2,300ft looking SE,
with Blackdown to the left and the airfield in the right middle distance. |
Just as we were packing up we were reminded that this is, indeed October, as some clouds to the north ‘waved’ us goodnight (see photo).
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| An October ‘wave’ goodnight from clouds in the north. |
Thanks go to a small and somewhat inexperienced team today, in particular to those who recognized the need and took time sympathetically to train up our newer members. Most especial thanks, however, are due to Peter Howarth who, having extricated himself from the winch, then ‘volunteered’ to run the log and signals in order for Ray Boundy to fly, before being able to fly for himself. Thank you, Peter.
Overall we achieved 26 launches which, from a 12 o’clock start (at the ‘right’ end), wasn’t too bad. And if in future you hear someone on the airfield concluding a statement with “It’s entirely up to you...” you may expect those words to be succeeded - in short order – by the commission of a capital crime!
Martin Cropper
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