Saturday's Gliding Club News-27/5/2023

High pressure is still very much in charge. Light NE breeze today with little chance of cloud until late afternoon if at all. So today will be a day of "blue thermals" i.e. thermals with no visible clues. These are conditions that I personally enjoy exploiting; once you believe that there really are thermals out there, they will be where you would expect them to be as there are no cloud shadows to break up the party.

The airfield from the north west at 3,000 feet.

It was somewhat buoyant from the off but early on finding a viable thermal low down was problematic. Late morning the inversion seemed to be capping things off at 2,500ft QFE (above the airfield) but it was rising quickly and by1pm it was more like 4,000ft with thermal cores in the 4-6 knot range. There were lots of interesting flights today. We welcome new member Andrew Berry who began his training with Instructor Mike Jardine. After successful check flights, early solo pilot Alasdair Barclay completed 3 more solo flights in the K13, the best of which was a 28 minute soaring flight. Meanwhile David Archer (another of our early solo pilots) made 3 more flights in the K8 a circuit and 2 short soaring flights.

On Wednesday Martin Broadway achieved 2,200 feet wearing his RNLI cap,
with change of hat today to a soaring hat and he soared to 3,900 feet.

Dave Archer continues to gain experience in the K8

Longest flight today was John Allan in this Mini Nimbus who was airborne for 3 hours and 3 minutes only returning to allow Duty Instructor Mike Jardine to leave the airfield (John is not yet a self-authorising pilot). The only other private glider out today was the Twin Astir which completed 2 flights over 1.5 hours with it's various syndicate members.

Dartmoor is already looking quite dry

John's knees at 4,400 feet in the Mini Nimbus

Visitors today were junior Joshua Mariner and not so junior Tim Langley both with 2 flight vouchers and One Day Course Candidate Michael Haynes. They all left with smiles after enjoying soaring flights.

Junior visitor Joshua with family (and me)

Tim Langley

Today's one day course Michael Haynes with instructor Scratch

An amazing day. Even though the airfield was unusually quiet we managed 24 flights with an average flight time of 35 minutes (this includes the practice cable breaks not just the soaring flights). Great fun

 Steve