Dartmoor Gliding News - Wednesday 26 February 2025

I couldn't get to the club today.  I had to wait for a technician to call to look at my upright freezer.  The freezer was out of warranty, of course, but fortunately insured.  I think it must be a sentient being and it obviously missed me when I was flying on Saturday.  How did I know this?  Well, when I returned home on Saturday afternoon there was water all over the utility room floor, a fan was squealing like a stuck pig, and the contents were defrosting rapidly.  I experienced a certain sense of Deja Vu as my last freezer failure was in a nuclear-powered submarine which is a major event dealing with five tonnes of defrosting food.  Fortunately this wasn't as bad and by working like Billy-O we managed to salvage most of the thawing contents.

So from regularly looking at the weather forecasts, weather, and Glide and Seek during the day I could see that there was no flying at Brentor.  But the Duty Instructor kindly sent me a report of the day's activities.  So here it is.

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Hi Gavin,

No flying today.

Plenty of tasks on the ground.

Work continued on the bus conversion to a launch point by John Smith.

David was replacing wheels on the base of the hangar doors.

Colin and Peter were working in the workshop on various tasks.

East end fencing repairs were tackled by Mike B, Steve F and Phil.

The new defibrillator was presented to the club by Robin. He was able to obtain a generous donation from the Tavistock Rotary Club and Robin's family members donated funds to this as an alternative to birthday presents for Robin.

"Our Doc", Robin presents the club with a defibrillator

The new instrument panel in the simulator was put to the test by Neal and was working well.

Note the instruments in the panel.  They are not actual aviation instruments. They are 3-D printed replicas driven by stepper motors from the outputs from the simulator's Condor II software, all created by Viktor.

Дякую, Вікторе (Thank you, Viktor)

A productive non flying day.

Mike

 

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A good effort by the DGS team even if they didn't get in the air.  What did the technician find today?  He found no faults (Ahhh!).  All diagnostic checks were OK.  He could see the last 120 hours of history and the sudden massive rise in temperature from -21C to ambient temperature on Saturday.  The Freezer is now running and its back down to -20C.  We have three bowls of water placed in it for test and we are monitoring progress.  Managing the club fleet is so much easier.

Gavin Short