Dartmoor Gliding Society Club News: Dartmoor Gliding News

Forecast for a dry day with 10+ knots winds from the east. There did not seem to be any wave in the forecast.

No wave in the forecast. What's this then?

Today saw the return of CFI Rick Wiles from his extended holiday down under. After an initial solo flight, Rick was into a very full training list. Meanwhile, Scratch was flying today's One Day Course candidate, Wilbur Budd.

New junior member Ed ready to fly

Junior member Aiden and family before he flew in the wave with me

Most flights were circuits or extended circuits in the somewhat buoyant air. Towards 3pm the cloud base started to lower until quite suddenly a wave bar set up over the winch. Luckily, I was launching with new junior member Aiden. At the top of the launch there was very strong rotor turbulence along with a noticeably lower cloud base. Releasing early we pushed towards the east, clearing the front of the cloud to be immediately in smooth wave lift at 4 knots. The cloud looked like a huge white cliff, and we climbed rapidly up the face. The wave bar was laying NW - SE not the more normal N-S. We explored north along the wave bar topping out at 2800ft QFE ( above the airfield ). Pushing back to the SE it was obvious that there was quite a bit of south in the wind; we were much slower over the ground on this beat.

Julia flying with Rick along the top of the wave bar

Aiden's view of the wave bar

Climbing nicely at 4 knots

Good view over the clouds

Mindful of the lowering cloud base, I radioed the other 2 aircraft who were up here with us with our plan to descend over Mary Tavy upwind of the cloud where we discovered that the cloud base was now around 1000ft. We flew an somewhat abbreviated circuit in strong rotor.

Approaching Marry Tavy ready for the descent.
(we are currently overhead the airfield over the wave bar.)

We paused any launching at this point because of the lowering cloud base. 15 minutes later the cloud suddenly detached from it's fixed wave position, drifting quickly away to the east and launching recommenced. The wave system was still there but was gradually lowering as it collapsed. This led to Adam Hoskin who was flying K13 FSD solo recording the longest flight of the day at 1hr 18min. He reported that the flight was conducted at the top of the wave system at just 1,400ft which reduced to 1,000ft by the end of the flight.

The cloud is clearing away overhead...

... revealing this lenticular to the north

As always, it was not all about the flying. John was busy working on Zack's Shack the new west end launch point bus. In the hangar, there was progress on the K8 C of A. Most interestingly, Julia Old presented a "technology demonstrator" for the new automation system for the manual winch. This looks very promising.