Dartmoor Gliding News - Saturday 7th September 2024

The weather today will be controlled by the coming cold front. On arrival at the airfield the sky was already full of the typical pre-frontal clouds, There were lenticular clouds all over the place indicating some strong winds and shears high up. A couple of members even spotted some Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds, again indicating some strong wind shears high up. Gradually the sky became a glowering grey cover with some lower cu to add interest. The forecast was for rain at 2.30pm so it was kit out and on with the show to see how far down the flying list we would get.

Kelvin-Helmholtz louds

This high contrast image shows the complexity of the clouds and...

... how it looked to the naked eye

We welcomed several visitors today. One Day Course candidate Andrew Scowcroft completed 4 out of his 6 flights and Air experience visitors Caroline Audy, Lewis Daw and Elizabeth Miall all completed their flying.

Elizabeth and family

Caroline ready to fly

On the club flying Mike Jardine worked his way through the list but the weather cut this effort a little short. CFI Rick Wiles  managed to fly with Seam Westrope for Sean's Bronze Flying test. Sean has one more flight to do to complete this.

A busy launchpoint

K13 launches again

The view south already showing rain spots on the canopy

As the morning wore on, the cloud darkened and there was some light drizzle and odd raindrops aloft that did not make it to the ground which really was the writing on the wall and around 2.30pm it was raining on the ground and the aircraft were returned to the hangar. We managed 24 flights in total. The longest flight was a very modest 8 minutes by Adam Hoskin in the K8 no doubt using the K8's slow flying and low sink rate to stretch his flight time.

Meanwhile, in the hangar, the technical team completed the reweighing of a brace of K6's.

A K6 being levelled ready to weigh

Measuring the front point to datum

Flying would not be possible without the considerable efforts of our team of members. Thankyou all and commiserations to the unlucky ones did not fly before the rain stopped play. Better luck next time.

Steve