Dartmoor Gliding News - Monday 29th August 2022

With Richard Roberts sending out Skysight predictions of wave, although he was unable to attend himself, would it or wouldn't it? Early arrivals were keen and started rigging. Duty instructor Rick looked after setting the field up and getting aircraft ready. In the morning briefing there was more talk of wave which could be disturbed late morning unless you managed to get high enough to be above the thermal activity. With a One Day Course booked in and 4 trainees the day would be not too frantic.

During the brief the ODC arrived. On introduction the name did not match the calendar. Some head scratching and further checking of the calendar did not clear the situation. Meanwhile another face appeared, a second ODC candidate. So in the space of 15 minutes or so, a relatively casual day turned a little more frantic. But Dartmoor Gliding would rise to the challenge look after both candidates.

First to fly was Rick with trainee Steve Lesson. Frome the top of the launch they were soon seen climbing away obviously in wave. Having climbed to 4000ft Steve Spent some time trying to stay with the lift and learning about wave flying.

K13 climbing up past cloud.
Approaching a half hour flight it was time to descend. At one stage during the descent Rick and Steve found that although they were using full airbrake they were still climbing at 4 to 6 knots indicated.

Duty BI Scratch (Dene Hitchin) started flying with the ODC students. First up was Graham Johnson who had a 38 minute introduction to wave flying and use of the controls.

Graham ready with Scratch.
Next to fly wit Scratch was second ODC student Johnathan Hearn. A 15 minute flight followed by a 8 minute flight introduced Johnathan to the wonders of flight.

Johnathan keen to get going.
During the rest of their day with us, the pattern was repeated. Graham always seemed to get the longer flight, but Johnathan ended with more take-offs and landings. They both enjoyed their day and were often comparing notes as to how well they were doing.

Graham on a soaring flight.
Training continued with Dave Bouchier flying with Rick. During the flight Dave did have some stick time to maintain some flying skills.

Next to fly with Rick was Paddy Cosgrave. During a mostly thermal flight, Paddy goy plenty of stick time to hone his general flying skills. He also covered slowly flying at about 36knts, mushing stall, changing effect of the rudder and stall with wing drop.

Recently soloed pilot Mark Elliott had a soaring flight of 21 minutes. Only conditions prevented him adding to his solo record.

Mark keeping a good lookout.
Last to fly with Rick was Dave Archer. A short first flight was followed by a 31 minute soaring flight. Maintaining a good lookout and improvements to circuit planning saw him complete the whole flight coping with the difficult conditions.

What about those private pilots? I had taken the fourth launch in the Kestrel. A launch to 1400ft allowed me to push out over the valley to the east climbing slowly and then head south towards Tavistock. Contacting better lift I was soon climbing past 4000ft. Flying back north I climbed towards 4500ft which seemed to be the top of the lift. This gave me time to explore the area and just north of Mary Tavy I found sone stronger lift, although much lore rougher than wave, so I thermalled in this lift topping out at 5400ft.

K13 view of Plymouth
Kestrel view of Yelverton and Plymouth
View across Dartmoor. Fernworthy just visible in the trees.
Roadford and A30
A flight of 2 hour 13 minutes claimed flight of the day. Other solo pilots had good flights. Adam Hoskin managed 1 hour 54 minutes in his K6. Mike Bennett managed 30 minutes, his first solo wave flight. A radio call was heard, "you should have turned right not left". Reply " But I'm climbing in 8 to 10 knots". "OK then". After his flight he said he really enjoyed it although his description of flying through rotor is not fit for this blog. After a struggle for 22 minutes in rotor earlier in the day, Phil Hardwick took another launch for a flight of 1 hour 16 minutes in more traditional thermic conditions.

A good day flying which proved Richard Roberts predictions do sometimes work. Thank you to all at the field and new winch drivers, Mark and Steve for keeping a steady launch rate.

Peter Howarth

Dartmoor Gliding News - Sunday 28th August 2022

 A moderate easterly wind, sunny conditions greeted the sunday soarers with one question, would there be wave? The calendar showed we were expecting 3 x single flight visitors and with five trainees today would be a relatively steady day flying.

Following a launch point briefing, the first visitor arrived. Nigel Mee was greeted by duty BI Gavin Short. On inspection of his voucher eagle eyed Gavin noticed that it was for a One Day Course. After consulting with me, we decided that we would be able to fulfil this especially as Nigel had been trying to fly with us for 3 years.

Sunday Soarers ready to fly,
Nigel Mee finally in a glider.
Nigel receiving his certificate.
Nigel thoroughly enjoyed his day with us and it was worth waiting for. with 1 hour 15 minutes under his belt.

At this point I must apologise to the trainees and club members at the club today, I was very remiss with taking any pictures around the club and hence most of the pictures in this blog are of our visitors.

First to fly with me was Peter Hamilton. On our first flight we entered the circuit only to encounter some heavy sink. With Peter not recognising this I took control and landed down the field giving a valuable lesson to Peter. On the second flight a similar situation developed, but was noticed by Peter and he executed a similar short circuit landing down the field. The third flight after soaring in some weak wave/thermal, we started the circuit higher than previous which enabled Peter to fly a more conventional circuit.

K13 waiting to launch
Next to fly with me was Freddie Colton. The first flight was a 18 minute soaring flight in more thermic lift. The second flight was aborted during the launch. Freddie was hot happy with the speed and made a positive decision to abort it and land straight ahead down the field. Well done for taking a positive decision. Three more flights later in the afternoon saw him execute a go around launch failure and two good circuits. Keep up the good work Freddie.

K13 off on another flight
Our two junior trainees Ollie Hunt and Riley Powell-Thomas who are progressing at a similar rate looked at slip and skid whilst generally practicing good flying and circuit planning. Keep up the good work.

Our next visitors arrived. David Parsons had been given the experience flight as a birthday present by partner Susan Milward who decided to join him by taking a flight as well. David enjoyed a 15 minute flight whilst Susan had an 8 minute flight.

David being watched by Susan.
David and Susan receiving their certificates.
Colin Boyd and Ed Borlase arrived at the launch point having carried out the annual inspection of Ed's K6. They both had well earned flights in the K8. It must have been a K8 day, as earlier in the day Adam Hoskin managed 33 minutes in the weak wave followed by Martin Broadway who eeked out a 1 hour 3 minutes in what appeared to be a funnel of weak wave between the club and Tavistock to claim flight of the day.

As the day came to a close we were treated to a spectacular mackerel sky to the west.

Mackerel sky.
Thank you to Adam and Martin for sharing the winching today. Also everybody else at the club for keeping a steady launch rate all day.

Peter Howarth

Dartmoor Gliding News-Thursday 25th August 2022

It’s Thursday so inevitably I had a final bit of Tinkering remaining after working on my glider last Thursday and Saturday.  I needed to tidy the new cables, test my Oudie (Ed: Flight computer) for power and data transfer, and reattach the fettled glare shield.  But I had to take the canopy off to do the job properly.  So there would be a little delay before I could rig.

The fettled shield glaring in its black beauty
(Ed: Can your captions get any more tortuous?)
Phil Hardwick was the Duty IFP today and would have a (Ed: Very as it would turn out) full dance card once the Duty Instructor arrived at 1300.

The forecast was mostly blue, thermic to over 3,000ft AGL, with a north westerly breeze which meant that we would be launching from the east end.  It had stopped raining in the early hours of the morning and there was no rain forecast for the day.  The temperature difference between the surface dew point and the air temperature was forecast to be 20C, so things were looking good.  And then there was reality…
Not looking very blue here
Colin was back in the workshop working on the trailing edge of one of CCY's wings.  Later he was assisted by Steve Lewis and between them they finished the rebuild of the trailing edge.  Well done, Guys.  Steve also finished painting the various patches of his Zugvogel IIIb, which had been made for maintenance and repair, and it is now ready to take to the sky again.

Richard's trailer had evidently been worked on some more.  It had been levelled with strategically placed logs and bottle jacks.  Alas I didn’t take any photos today.  Perhaps it is nearly ready for some welding and letting of new steel.  And so it was late in the afternoon as the sound of grinding was clearly audible from the winch.  Scratch was at “Play”.

"Operation Clean Up" had removed the pile of logs in front of the parking bays by the clubhouse.  However, there was still old metal and wheels piled up beside the hangar that needed to be taken away.  Mike Bennett is planning that for a future Thursday.

The DGS fleet lined up for Daily Inspection
As ever someone got the tea on whilst Peter regaled us with tales of the cutting deck failure following his "tractoring" (Ed: Don't you mean mowing?) on Tuesday.  Work has to continue on non-flying days during the week so that we can make the most of the weather on flying days.  Thanks Peter.

Once club fleet was ranged, the privateers started to rig, and the sun came out
Peter Howarth and Hugh Gascoyne took the first flight to check the winch.  Eleven minutes was promising enough to get Peter up in his Kestrel for a dizzying 3 minutes 
as massive sink brought him back to earth.

A Kestrel without its owner
After waiting a bit I took a launch in my Standard Cirrus and I scratched in very narrow lift for 7 minutes before landing.

Short prepares for the first of two “short” flights in his Standard Cirrus (Ed: Groan)
Meanwhile Phil flew our first visitor, Roland Wood.  Hugh took a launch and managed to stay aloft.  Then Rick arrived and flew with John Allan.  

The face of concentration and contemplation as Hugh readies himself
for the second longest flight of the day at 52 minutes
Our first visitor Roland Wood preparing to fly with Phil Hardwick
John Allan preparing for a final check with the senior instructor
Rick cleared John Allan to fly solo who then brought the club K-8 to the launch point.  Canny Malcolm took a launch in the Twin Astir, with his side kick – the other Malcolm, and they promptly "got away".  Rick and Paddy then tried to emulate the “Two Malcolms” but only managed 13 minutes aloft.  Phil continued visitor flying in FSD while I drove the retrieve while waiting for the sky to improve.

The sky was improving but it was still resolutely blue over the moors to the east
(behind the camera).
By 1400 the sky was looking more promising and in parts it was starting to develop into "Cloud Streets".  Time to get a relief on the retrieve vehicle.  I wasn't the only one who thought so as Martin Broadway took a launch in his Libelle and stayed up too.

The reason for the long cockpit of Libelle is revealed by Martin Broadway
enjoying his pre-flight checks
(Ed: I am sure that “E” in the mnemonic “CB SIFT BEC” does not
stand for a back of the eyelids check)
Father and son combo, Robert and Andrew Partridge, temporary members after their flights with us last month, arrived at the same time as the instructors.  The flying list was pretty full but we made sure that all on the list were flown.  At the end of the day Rick flew two flights with Dad Robert and Mike flew son Andrew twice.

Winch driver Mike Bennett pontificates on recent global and geo-political events,
and the current world social-economic stability
(Ed: For those of you who didn’t think that winch driving requires intellectual rigor think again)
Throughout the afternoon the sky stayed resolutely blue to the east of the airfield with the occasional cloud drifting east and the cloud base rising from 2,500 feet AGL to 3,000 feet, by then the wind was driving you away from the airfield pretty smartly.

Mike Bennett launches another K-13 into the blue sky
An instructor’s joy – Andrew remembers his pre-flight checks
(Ed: Or, “ I know what I’ll do with Andrew, I’ll give him a cable break”)
During the afternoon we had a call from the clubhouse.  “There is a visiting glider pilot from the USA who would like to come up to the launch point”.  All in a day’s work at Dartmoor International and so the Jeep was duly dispatched to collect Mike from Kansas.  Mike was staying in a B&B near Mary Tavy and saw us flying 

(Ed: This always happens to me when I am on holiday too much to my families chagrin!).  Mike took great interest in the proceedings, and viewed the club and private gliders on the field.  Some types, such as the Kestrel he had not seen before.  After a certain amount of show and tell he revealed he was in a syndicate in a Discus 2C back in Kanas (Ed: Lovely machine.  So there really is a Yellow Brick Road in Kanas City).  Mike, enjoy the next part of your UK holiday, which will be in Cornwall.

Blue, Green, and White
Our second visitor Jan Deis-Horton prepares to fly with Phil
Returning temporary member Ciaran Kane ready to launch
with instructor Mike Jardine, the first of a pair of short soaring flights
And then safely back to earth in the increasing wind strength
Meanwhile Hugh snuck back in to the cockpit of K-6, FUB for a second flight of 28 Minutes (Ed: You did realise that your syndicate partner was also on the field, albeit at the other end driving the winch?).

“Peter, can I sit in your glider please?”
The afternoon sunshine glinting on polished GRP
Our third visitor turned out to be a trio: Andy Jutson, and his grandsons Christopher Glanville and James Glanville, from Plymouth and Saltash.  Up for a challenge Phil carried out his IFP duties to the letter and flew all three, starting with the grandsons.

Grandson Christopher Glanville views the instrument panel prior to his first flight with Phil
A wing holder’s view of FSD prior to launch
Phil congratulates Christopher Glanville on his pair of flights
Phil readies himself to fly with the other grandson, James Glanville
James Glanville looks pleased with the flight that Phil delivered
Rick takes the first of two training circuits with Peter Hamilton
By now the sky was now almost totally blue
Overheard at the launch point “If you can still see the sun you are not pulling hard enough”
The two workhorses earning their keep.
Mike Jardine assists returning member Robert Partridge with his straps prior to him flying with Rick
Peter Hamilton awaits the canopy being lowered and locked before attaching the launch cable
Grandfather Andy Jutson ready to fly with Phil for the final pair of IFP flights of the day
Mike Jardine ready to fly with returning member Andrew Partridge
Today we achieved 36 flights and some of them were soaring flights.  Flight of the day was by the “The Malcolms” (Ed: Age trumps youth) with one hour and one minute of flight in the Twin Astir.  Also Rick got some solo hours in (Ed: I think you mean minutes) by hangar landing FGR solo.

We had more visitors and returning temporary members than expected but between Phil, the Duty IFP, and instructors Rick and Mike Jardine we managed to fly them all except for Mike Bennett who after a marathon on the winch had to leave early.  Thanks Mike for your support it getting us aloft.

As ever the members kept the launch rate going and all our visitors satisfied.  Well done all.

Gavin Short