Dartmoor Gliding News-Saturday 3rd December 2022

This has been a busy week. 

In the middle of the week the club took delivery of a 2nd Supercat winch which arrived on the back of a lorry from Nympsfield. Although this winch has some mechanical issues it is hoped that these can be repaired so that we will have 2 of these winches to deliver the club's launching requirements. The "new" winch has a damaged gearbox but we have already tracked down tracked down the original manufacturer and have arranged for the gearbox and axel to be sent to them for repair.

The "new" winch looking good in the midweek sunshine

Taking axel and gearbox out

New winch now minus the drive machinery

Axel and gearbox ready to go to the original manufacturer

Saturday's forecast was for a NE wind and cold temperatures with no rain. The soundings and all the soaring forecasts were not showing any wave but you never know and the possibility lead to the club gliders being joined by a couple of private single seaters. There was quite a lot of cloud cover some of which definitely looked like wave. 

Is there wave?

So what did we find? Well the first launch reported very rough conditions. This was followed by a 16minute flight by Scratch with returning temporary member Mackenzie. Scratch reported 2 smooth patches of gentle lift in amongst the otherwise turbulent sky. At 11am I took the first flight with today's One Day Course candidate Isaac Daykin. The conditions were very turbulent which led to me standing Isaac down. 

By 2pm the conditions were reported as "calmer" so I took Isaac up for another flight and started his controls training. At this point I was called away to the clubhouse for a meeting about the new club website so Scratch continued with Isacc's training.

Isaac and Scratch

From about 2.30pm a little low wave set up with several pilots managing soaring flights the best of which was Andy Davey with 44 minutes in his Libelle. Nobody reported any great heights. The best I heard of was 1900ft above the airfield (2700ft above sea level). The fun continued until dark. 

FGR ready to go

Phil's DG300

Andy putting the Libelle on line before his day winning flight

While flying was going on, the hangar was busy as K13 CCY was rigged after it's recent CofA  / ARC work and, subject to a successful test flight will join the fleet again.

CCY laid out in the hangar ready for rigging

Wings on nearly ready to go

A cold but rewarding day

Steve