Dartmoor Gliding Society Club News: Dartmoor Gliding News-Saturday 21st January 2023

High pressure is in charge so the seemingly endless frontal systems with their wind and rain are now just a memory. Today started out cold with a SE airflow and what looked like a cap cloud over the higher tors to the east which extended all the way to Mary Tavy to begin with. This cloud slowly withdrew to the east as the day wore on.

The Cap cloud early in the day

Cap cloud ? Easterly wind ?? Must be a wave day then. Well not exactly. There was no stable layer under an inversion low down and the wind did not seem to increase much with height. Flying, though, you could detect areas of reduced sink where the wave should be and this provided the solo pilots in the K8 some entertainment as they tried to extend their flight times. The best of these was Adam Hoskin with a 15 minute flight closely followed by 14 minutes from Gavin. Not exactly soaring, more like falling with style ( Buzz Lightyear fans please note ). The K13's only managed to extend their circuits to about 7 minutes but they did have their training exercises to do.

Who would think that this quiet launch point would produce 38 launches today?

The airfield remained usable all day and was not as wet or muddy as might have been expected. This was just as well as by close of play we had completed 38 flights. Good going.

Gavin's Cirrus airing in the winter sun

Apart from the club training load which was relatively light today we welcomed several visitors. One Day Course candidate Robert Howe flew with me and our second One Day Course, Mathew Foster flew with Scratch ( Dene Hitchen ). We had a late visitor fitted, Valerie Keily who had a couple of Introductory flights with Gavin.

Robert waiting to fly with the photographer ( me)

Mathew with Scratch

Valerie receives her Certificate from Gavin

We also welcomed today a visitor from a local magazine, Rosemary Best who was visiting to put together an article about Gliding on Dartmoor. After spending lots of time taking photos and talking to members Rosemary flew with Phil in CCY.