After the rain came the sun. Following a wet and soggy Monday and Tuesday, summer returned. The Wednesday Wavers got their instructor back after his holidays, and my dance card as the second instructor was full.
From our resident guru, this was the Wednesday Weather forecast:
High pressure is well established, giving us a NE wind flow over the field. Wind NE 8kts. There should be some thermal activity from mid-morning onwards with 3.5kts by afternoon, going to 3500ft. As well as the usual pictures, I have included the Skew-T for 1300 tomorrow. This has a very good profile for wave, so we could either have a good thermal day. A wave day. Or neither if the wave and thermals interfere with each other. Unfortunately, we won’t know till we fly tomorrow. 
Here is an explanation. A Skew-T meteorological chart, or Skew-T Log-P diagram, is a thermodynamic chart used by meteorologists to visualise atmospheric data from weather balloon soundings, providing vertical profiles of temperature, dew point, and wind. It's essential for analysing atmospheric stability and predicting phenomena like thunderstorms and cloud formation. The "Skew-T" refers to the angled (skewed) temperature lines, while "Log-P" indicates that pressure is plotted on the vertical axis using a logarithmic scale.
 |
| A Skew T diagram (or Tephigram) for today |
Yesterday Colin, new member Henry Cole, and I spent the day dodging showers, or more accurately, heavy rain, while conducting the Airworthiness Review Check of my Standard Cirrus. The trailer was positioned on the hangar apron and saw us ferrying bits of glider inside the front of the hangar, out of the rain, to be worked on. How did it go? It passed with flying colours, except Colin wanted to take a small piece home with him for further examination.
"Nothing vital?" I hear you ask. Well, yes; it was the main pin. The bit that holds the wings together. It needed to be X-rayed. For the man who seems to have done everything and owned everything, it won't surprise our readers that Colin once owned a portable X-Ray machine. He liberated it from Freedom Fields Hospital when it closed down. Unfortunately, he gave it away to a dentist, or was it a vet, and he needs to track him down and ask for the favour to be returned to have a better look at my main pin.
So, since I couldn't fly my own glider, it was fortuitous that I got to fly today's visitors in the Puchacz. Hopefully, it would take my mind off the possibility of purchasing an inevitably costly replacement from Messrs Schempp-Hirth in Germany.
After the morning brief and the Daily Inspections of five club gliders and several of the steeds of the privateers, flying commenced. Launching to the east in a north-easterly, which forecast would win out? A nice thermic summer's day, that I thought was coming, or Andy's wave? Hopefully not a melange of the two that would cancel each other out.
Other activity included Mike Bennett working with Colin, taking yet more waste to Saunders' scrapyard. The site has got to look good for the club BBQ on Saturday night and for the three-day expedition to Brentor from our sister club, the Devon and Somerset Gliding Club, the following weekend.
Initially, it was breezy at the launch point, and the wind was howling at the clubhouse, which is an indication of rotor and hence wave. So Andy took a launch and made use of his "iron thermal" to try and connect with the wave. It was not to be. After a lot of puttering about the sky, he failed to connect. An unsuccessful flight, you hear. Well, it might be for Andy, but just over three hours would be a very satisfactory result for the rest of us. After that, our resident hangar dweller took a launch with the Duty Instructor for a circuit. Perhaps there was some thermal activity there.
To confirm the suspicion Mike flew with Keegan Coetzee for 37 minutes.
 |
| Steve Fetcher ready to offer a "brown" strop to Mike and Keegan |
 |
| Keegan thermalling well at 1,600 feet QFE; a good angle of bank (image rotating the photo so that the horizon is level), the speed nicely under control, and the yaw string in the centre - Perfect! |
The first visitor today was John Rennie, who came to the club from the Tavistock area. He was accompanied by his wife, who often sees our gliders in the air. This was an item on John's aviation bucket list. His last adventure was a helicopter flight. After an introductory flight, we had an extended soaring flight, and John tried his hand at the controls. On the first flight, I wasn’t sure whether the lift was wave or thermals. The second flight confirmed the lift as fairly broken thermals, but we managed to climb several hundred feet, which allowed John to take the controls.
 |
| John Rennie ready for his first launch |
John picked up the basics quickly, and his previous powered aircraft experience clicked back in, but he admitted that some things were very different. His background as a civil flight engineer made for fascinating listening.
Later, Mike made a Friends and Family flight with Bobby Envy, his neighbour from Torpoint. After hearing of Mike's activities, Bobby was keen to try gliding. After reminiscing about his time in various frigates, including HMS Plymouth during the Falklands War, it was fitting that he enjoyed 27 minutes of soaring and was able to take in the sights of Plymouth Sound and be able to see if there were any Royal Navy warships moored in Plymouth Breakwater.
 |
| Mike and his neighbour from Torpoint, Bobby Envy, ready for a soaring flight |
 |
| Mike and Ian King thermalling with Andy's Ventus CT |
Then it was time for the privateers to launch. Steven Fletcher, who managed just over an hour in his Open Cirrus and John Allan soared. The details of his flight will be detailed later on.
Alas, my 1200 visitor was a no-show. That presented an opportunity. Keegan had brought his friend, C-J Coetzee, a fellow Royal Marine, to see what the Wednesday Wavers got up to. Keen to have a go, he purchased a Navy Flight Voucher and took two flights with me. Before we talk about the flights, the more astute readers will have noticed that our two Royal Marines share the same surname. Brothers, No? Cousins, No?. The story is much more intriguing than that. Yes, they share the same surname, which is of Dutch/Flemish origin. They are both South African, and according to Wikipedia Coetzee is the tenth most common surname in South Africa. They both joined the Royal Marines and were in training batches two weeks apart. But they properly met and became friends when they passed out of training. It transpires that they both come from the same town in South Africa, but they had never met until they were on a Royal Marine parade ground in the United Kingdom. An amazing tale! Keegan and C-J, you are most welcome at DGS. Now back to the flying.
During our nine and 13-minute flights, C-J proved to be a very "Quick Study", as our US cousins would say. Despite never being in a light aircraft or glider before, he analysed what I was doing in a thermal turn, using the rudder in conjunction with the ailerons. He also recognised that I was applying a slight backwards pressure to the stick to maintain the attitude in the turn. After climbing to a reasonable height, C-J took to the controls like a pro, and we covered the Basic Instructor syllabus in next to no time across the two soaring flights. Time to fly with another instructor C-J!
 |
| C-J Coetzee took advantage of the Navy Flying scheme |
My third visitor flight was with outdoor training instructor Annie Hartnett, who was accompanied by her partner Christopher Williams. Christopher may take a flight with us in the future. The flights were his birthday present to Annie. No, readers, I am not going to be ungallant and spill the beans on exactly which birthday. We enjoyed three short flights, but apparently the adrenaline rush didn’t wear off on the third flight, and Annie asked if I still got an adrenaline rush on each launch.
 |
| Annie Hartnett ready to celebrate her birthday with Gavin, high over Dartmoor |
The reason for the three flights was that the weather had cycled. It had become overcast, contrary to the forecast, and the cloud overdevelopment stopped the sun from hitting the ground. I recalled the motto of my German guiding club SFV Südeifel "The sun is my engine", and without the sun, we don't go very far. Dave Archer confirmed the change in conditions with an extended circuit in the K-8. Annoyingly, the cloud cover persisted for the remainder of the day.
My final visitor was Paul Priscott. Paul had flown with us a few years back, but the pressure of work as an Electrical Engineer prevented him from taking his flying further. Recently retired and having drawn up a short list of activities to keep himself occupied, he wanted to revisit gliding. There was a change of glider for Paul's flight to allow Mike and John Osment to continue John's conversion (or should that be re-conversion?) to glass in anticipation of him flying his Standard Cirrus at Brentor.
I was secretly pleased as the K-13 is better suited to the now, weak conditions. Although we had, as expected, two slightly extended circuits, Paul enjoyed getting back on the controls. So that was the end of Wednesday's flying. Paul and I were the last on the field, and he helped the Wavers pack the hangar. So thermals won the day, well, half the day anyway. But that wasn't the whole story. I mentioned that we would hear more from John Allan.
 |
| A happy Paul Priscott receives his post-flight certificate from Gavin back at the clubhouse |
 |
| Climbing at an average of 2 knots above the clouds, at 3,400 AFE. The wind is from right to left. |
 |
| Climbing more strongly while approaching 4,000 feet |
 |
| Keeping a careful eye on the gaps in the cloud cover and ready to descend if they start to close up. John is over the moors, but I don't recognise where. Thank heavens for GPS and a moving map in the cockpit. |
 |
| The wave gap and John's safety route down were quite extensive. |
John's flight was just shy of two hours.
It was clear that the Wavers had exploited the interesting conditions today. In gliding, one is always learning about the weather and local meteorological conditions. Also, our gliders are packed full of technology. As an example, when he wasn't flying today, John was getting to grips with the electronic intricacies of his glider. Indeed, he is struggling to get his "Open vario" to declare a task electronically. Namely, to get it to declare a task to his Flarm, which is also his approved data logger; on the Open vario the start and finish to his Diamond Goal task, which he recently flew, has a 1 km start and finish line, which is correct. However, by the time the electrons arrive at his Flarm they had morphed into an FAI sector instead of a start and finish line. Curious and perplexing.
 |
| This is John's recent task configured on his Open vario but wasn't what his Flarm received. |
As to the weather, we got a melange of thermals and mountain lee wave. Fortuitously, they didn't seem to cancel each other out as feared, but seemed to be sequential in their appearance over the airfield. What dampened down the later flights was the total cloud cover, which suppressed the thermal activity. Well, you can't have it all, but the maxim "Never say never to wave at Brentor" held good today and allowed the Wednesday Wavers to continue to live up to their name.
Gavin Short
No comments:
Post a Comment