Dartmoor Gliding News-Saturday 10th September 2022

Today's weather did not promise great soaring. The air temperature was a balmy 23C but it had also been warm overnight. Good soaring days have large differences between overnight and daytime temperatures. From very early on there were some weak looking clouds scudding around low down in the northerly breeze which looked like cloud streets as the day wore on but delivered very little in the way of usable lift.

The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness begins 

K13 on the long walk to the east end launchpoint

Undaunted by this, Richard Roberts launched in his Discus and promptly disappeared for 1 hr  25 minutes exploring the local area from a very low cloudbase that stubbornly remained at about 2000ft all day. To put this achievement into context the next longest flight of the day was 13 minutes ( in fact 2 flights of 13 minutes ) posted by the K13s.

Richard returns in the Discus

The high cover did not help the soaring

We hosted a One Day Course today Mary Pengelly who flew with Scratch ( Dene Hitchen ) and went home with a smile on her face. We also had 3 Introductory flight vouchers; Gabriel Aguiar, Jane Field and  Robert Thomas who all flew with me.

Mary and Scratch

Gabriel Aguiar

Jane Field

And Robert discussing the membership card with me

The training programme was very full with everyone making progress and Mark Elliot fling solo in the K13 after a couple of successful check flights.

Davis waiting to launch Adam in the K8 

While all the flying fun was underway, Colin Boyd assisted by Adam  Hoskin and John Smith were busy in the workshop progressing the repairs to the trailing edges of CCY as part of it's C of A.

The work continues in the workshop

A busy day which resulted in 47 launches.

Steve