Another great day beckoned. The RASP promised a peak of 5 stars with good soaring from around 11.00 onwards. Predicted cloud base was 4000 feet by mid day. Needless to say many of us rigged and waited. Looking at the clouds early on it was obvious that they were lower than forecast and not exactly as expected. A large long dark grey cloud sat over the east end of the airfield and wasn’t moving. Phil Hardwick wondered whether it was convergence, it definitely wasn’t wave.
First up at 1045 was Mike Jardine with Robin Wilson and they immediately could be seen to be circling in lift to the SE landing after 24 minutes.
Now was the time to go and so Andy Davey, Peter Howarth, Sean Westope and myself launched and found lift under the same dark grey cloud. Initially I found it a bit slow to climb but with patience I got to cloud base at 2000 feet with Andy, Peter and Sean all in a nice stack with Mike Jardine in a K13 joining us. I then decided to explore the lift and decided that Phil was right, it probably was a convergence as I flew along the leading edge of it which ran from Tavistock to Black down and gave consistent lift of 2 up. Eventually getting to 2700 feet cloud base. The lift got stronger with some bumpy thermals peaking around 8 up in places and better to the North. All of us getting well over an hour. Ed Borlase, Adam Hoskin and Phil with Robin in their Twin Astir all launched getting good soaring flights all over an hour.
Peter set off for Meldon Reservoir where he took pictures of his hand ( he hadn’t noticed the phone was in selfie mode)! Landing after 3hrs and 35 minutes.
Hugh had a long list of visitors starting with Gary Pearcy.
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| Gary and Hugh after their flights. |
and then Mike Wright, with Climbs to 2,200ft. Gary and Mike had good extended flights and enjoyed themselves even though some of the thermals were choppy with strong cores.
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| Mike Wright receiving his certificate. |
We were joined by 3 visiting Pilots from Culdrose eager to get some winch experience, Christopher Dennis, Christopher Morris and Steve Moore. All of them flying with Mike at various times during the day and enjoying the Dartmoor scenery. As the day progressed the lift decided to disappear around 1300 with 5 flights only managing a short circuit before conditions changed dramatically with lovely thermals and longer flights in the afternoon.
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| Steve Moore on his way to 3100 feet. |
We also had a fourth visiting pilot this time from Hereford, Sukdev Galal who enjoyed 2 flights with us. Trainees Neil Oxley and Lorraine Kindley had good long soaring flights getting used to the effects of the controls.
Scratch flew another visitor Luke Lawrence. Dave Archer flew the K8.
Around 2pm the cloud base rose and Dan Durdin flew with Scratch and his girl friend Cecily flew with Hugh, both getting good soaring flights to over 3000 feet and a tour of the area.
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| Dan and Cecily with Scratch and Hugh. |
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| Thermals were getting stronger and there was lift everywhere. |
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| Adam’s K6 and the club K8 taken by Mike in the K13. |
Longest flight of the day was an awesome 4hrs and 49 minutes by Adam but the biggest achievement of the day has to go to Alisdair Barclay who achieved his Personal Best of 1hr 15 minutes to achieve his 1hr soaring flight towards his Bronze and making a hole in his flying account, well done Alisdair.
After Colin Boyd had helped Mike Bennet with fettling his Libelle he flew with Peter Howarth.
In the evening it was another visit by the Scouts group. This time the team flew 6 scouts, each getting 2 flights each and thoroughly enjoying their experience with two of them expressing an interest to become pilots.
A long and busy day with 47 flights in all with the last one landing at 20.42.
A huge thank you to all those who provided the ‘evening shift’ to fly the scouts.
A great day!
Steve Fletcher
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