Sunday 15th January 2012

“Wave?? - Wossadd??” “Wave? Iss like, well, wave innid, yunnow, goes up an dahn, dunnit – Yer can’t seeit, feelit, tuchit, but if you gah dahn Dartmoor Gliding in an Easterly an ya take a winch launch id’ll be there, juss’ like Ronseal innit: it does wut id sez on the tin.”

Except today was a southerly – so no chance, the wind blowing almost exactly 90 degrees across the runway, pretty strong, and verrryy cold. Just the day for a silliest hat competition! Sponsored by resident expert and retired GP Robin Wilson, who said ’There are some people wandering around without hat’s on – they’ve got to be absolutely stupid!’, and led CFI Don Puttock, who had to send all the way to Australia for his stupid hat, Sandra Buttery recorded all hats on parade on video and came up with the winner – as they say ‘You’ve got to be in it (the hat, that is) to win it!’

And so to the first flight and, lo and bloody behold, the K-13 is glued to the sky! Analysis from the chart shows that the surface wind was around 170 degrees, at 2000ft around 160 and a height another 10 degrees backed – so it was just clipping the western edge of Dartmoor and yet sufficient for us to launch directly into smooth wave to 3, 4 or even more thousand feet, as Jacob Knight (check flight-first 2 launches), Scratch (1hr), Jeff Cragg (2hrs+), Robin Wilson (1hr), Nigel Williamson (1hr), Roger Applebloom (40mins), Luke (20mins - beating his longest flight to date by 13 mins) and John Ashby (40 mins) will be able to tell you. And Trevor Taylor 2hrs 15 minutes to 8400 feet. Not the highest - that was me at 9200 feet.

Above Brentor looking north

If thanks go to anyone (in particular) they go to Don Puttock for realising that it was a ‘Ronseal‘ day: the wave was there - and then enabling trainees to enjoy it (including the low level rotor!) It was one of those days without thermals, visitors, cable breaks or breakdowns: just us pitting ourselves against nature - in the form of gravity - with nature - in the shape of the wind - to achieve what we like best about Brentor: flying with no engine, to improbable heights.

The view from 4000 ft today

Martin Cropper

Saturday 14th January 2012

Today saw us wrapped up against the biting SE wind under 2/8 cloud cover. Good news. The airfield has already dried out considerably and will be ready to roll tomorrow. 

Darren Wills and Mike Gadd looking happy in their warm flying kit.

There was a good turn out of members which ensured a full day for instructor Ged Nevisky. The flights were mostly circuits but occasional thermal activity kept several pilots amused with the best being 19 minutes from Rick Wiles flying the K8. In case you are wondering, even with the strong south east wind there was no sign of wave, the wind and temperature profiles were all wrong.

"Shrek" waiting for his another training flight with instructor Ged in G-DBVB

Other things going on included the usual glider maintenance work by Chris and Martin who had spread out into the workshop to find warmth to enable their glues and potions to harden.

Chris and Martin in the clubhouse. 

Alan Holland fitted a new total energy probe to the K8 hand crafted by himself as part of his quest to improve the variometer system. The winch drivers continue to get to grips with the Launch Assistant system.

Hand crafted total energy probe on the K8

And what are the best dressed glider pilots wearing this winter?

Rick Wiles looking like he only needs an AK47 to complete this outfit

Steve

Wednesday 11th January 2012

Fog on the north coast and low cloud both to the north and south of the site, but at sunny Brentor, the few club members who turned up were rewarded with clear skies the whole day, coupled with a light SW breeze.

Operating from a relatively dry area near the eastern boundary gave us maximum launch runs, with heights of up to1,400 feet. Moreover launch speeds were enhanced by the club’s first-ever use of the Skylaunch Launch Assistant, introduced on a trial basis by our winch master, Alan Ballard.

Skylaunch  Launch Assistant on it's temporary mounting in the winch 

This electronic system relies on a transmitter in the glider (today we were using K7/13 ‘BVB’) continuously feeding glider launch speed data to a base station, with digital readout, mounted in the winch. The results were very encouraging, with optimum launch speeds achieved most of the time. As an added bonus, we were using the Guslaunch winch with two new cables, which meant that the only launch failures were of the simulated variety
.

This group are getting good at handling gliders on very soft airfields.

The small band of pilots who have been turning up regularly on winter Wednesdays regardless of the weather to stay current were rewarded with solo flights - albeit in the two-seater - and Mike Keller, back recently after a bit of a layoff from flying, joined their ranks after a couple of refresher flights.

It was good to have Shrek back with us after a few months away in Poland, with Ged putting him through his paces on his way toward that first solo milestone.

Steve Raine (left) contemplates his first solo with instructor Bob Pirie

But the best news last! Throughout the autumn and winter, one of our newest club members, Steve Raine, has been attending regularly to fly, to undertake ground training (including flying the simulator) and to muck-in with the chores along with the rest of the team. Today his determination was rewarded with two successful solo flights, culminating in elegant ‘arrivals’ on the relatively small dry area of the airfield which we were using as our preferred landing area. (Steve’s rapid progress must be partly attributable to gliding and fixed-wing training he undertook many years ago - firstly as an ATC cadet and then in the Army.) Congratulations, Steve!

And both are still smiling after the event.

Bob Pirie

Sunday 8th January 2012

What had been forecast a medium-height cloud "circuit-bashing" day, turned out to be a clagged-in typical Dartmoor day. Ever the optimists, the enthusiastic band who turned out set-to getting BVB and the winch ready for a change in the weather. Sadly the only change was for the worse.

But Dartmoor weather makes folks resourceful so various people got busy with various tasks from the never-ending list of things that keep a gliding club thriving.

Don was closeted with Martin Cropper engaged in arcane financial shenanigans. Martin C also teamed up, later, with Mike Ashton to give a death defying display of precision chisel work removing layers of 2-pack from the Pirat wing centre-section (I could have watched for hours!) whilst myself and Ged fitted the transponder unit of the Skylaunch Launch Assistant system to K13 BVB in the hope that we could put it through its paces.

Meanwhile, back at the clubhouse Don delivered briefings on various topics whilst tea was drunk in the warmth of the woodburner.(how come he gets all the cushy jobs?) There was also much lively what-iffery regarding the Launch Assistant, in various likely and less-likely scenarios, but more of that another day.

Alan Ballard

Saturday 7th January 2012

A strong, biting cold wind blew from the north west under a glowering, grey sky for most of the day except for a brief spell when the cloud rolled away only to be replaced an hour later.

The hardy Saturday crew were up on the airfield with a single 2 seater to keep their currency,  progress their “standardisation” flights. We welcomed back Will Wilson returning  after a winter break and our globe trotting “Shrek” returning from 4 months at home in Poland.

Duty Instructor Martin Smith in the front seat with Rick Wiles flying from the back

Dene “Scratch” Hitchen added to today’s interest by fitting a video camera to the wingtip of the K13. We look forward to the videos but in the meantime we have a couple of stills to wet our appetites.

Will Wilson ( front ) having a check flight with Martin

Also on the airfield today were Matthew Wiles and Sandra Buttery both very keen to get to grips with their new roles as Junior Gliding Officer and Club Secretary respectively. We wish them every success.

The most unlucky member today ( and surely a candidate for the Wooden Spoon trophy ) was Victor who slipped and fell gracefully face first into some very black looking mud. This necessitated him returning to the clubhouse to clean up before returning to the launch point.

Victor taking the latest DGS beauty treatment

I think mention must be made of Chris Kaminski, Bob Jones, Alan Carter and Chris Matten who all spent the day in the hangar sanding the Pirat wing. Real dedication.

Steve

Wednesday 5th January 2012

The sodden state of the airfield is apparently as bad as anyone can remember, and many weeks of constant erosion have caused the hardened access tracks to take on the characteristics of rocky trout streams. What's more, practically the whole glider fleet is off-line temporarily for upgrading or winter maintenance.

Given the above circumstances and today's intermittent showers, one might have expected the hangar doors to have remained closed and maybe a handful of pilots huddled around the woodburner 'setting the world to rights' after all the Christmas and New Year festivities.

But not a bit of it! When I rolled in through the gate, my fellow-instructor Ged and a handful of would-be flyers were already at the launch point with BVB, while Martin Smith and Steve Lewis (later joined by Karon Matten and Bob Jones) were hard at work progressing the fleet renovations. However, not all important achievements happen on flying days, and our spirits (and launch heights!) were raised by the fact that the 'winch fairies' had been at work during the week, extracting the Guslaunch winch (complete with new cables) from the swamp at the east end of the field. Thus with a strong westerly wind, combined with some accomplished driving by Dave Rippon and Phil Hardwick, we were able to achieve launch heights of up to 1,500 feet. Meanwhile the ML winch sat there 'in disgrace' while our resident metallurgists pondered the reason for its two nearly-new cables becoming knackered after just a few weeks of use.

The small cadre of DGS pilots and trainees who turn up regularly to fly on Wednesdays and weekends are arguably among the most 'current' in the country - yet there's always room for improvement, and it was encouraging to see how positive they were about the introduction of regular Standardisation Flights for all pilots, announced by CFI Don on 2nd January.

Spinning and launch failure-related exercises are key features of the programme, and today's generous launch heights resulted in everyone making inroads into the former - although the state of the airfield cramped our style as far as simulated launch failures were concerned. And as for 'real ones' - the new cables didn't let us down.

I'm sure Ged and all the other instructors will join me in saying how encouraging it is to have such a healthy turnout of 'regulars' on both flying and non-flying days. If you're not one of that group - and winter's getting you down - come along and let the Standardisation programme helped to blow the cobwebs away. You'll start the season with more enthusiasm and confidence - and as a safer and more current pilot than you are today.

Bob Pirie

Sunday 1st January 2012

We now seem to be in the middle of the monsoon season. A few hardy souls ventured out complete with wellies.

Yesterday we discovered a little windfall in the new portacabin --- what appears to be most of the body parts for a BMW. With an enterprise rarely seen outside of "Only Fools and Horses" we spent some time trying to identify the model so we can flog the parts on Ebay. Roger Appleboom has taken the task as his homework for the week. If we get this right , the portacabin will come with a small profit---Dell boy would be proud!

Then a briefing on speed to fly and how to use the information to improve cross country speeds----well if you cant do it for real, talking about it is the next best thing. After several attempts using the simulator and some "oh I get it",  the speeds improved, the leader by a short hair was Martin Cropper who flew a blistering speed (complete with tongue out of the corner of his mouth!)

Happy New Year everyone

Don

Saturday 31st December 2011

The year was set to finish with real Devon drizzle - lovely.

As usual there was plenty of work going on, Martin, Alan and myself working in the hangar. Don, Ged and Sandra clearing out the new "porta-cabin" in preparation for it's use as a winch and vehicle parts store. Rick and Ged positioned the Guslaunch winch ready for the next flying day.

A nice day with friends.

Steve

Wednesday 28th December 2011

The few stalwarts intent on 'committing aviation' at the club today found themselves engaged in an increasingly chilly and moist 'Rain Dance'. Not only were there heavy rain showers to be endured and huge puddles to skipped across or waded through, but a pair of Raines (Steve and son Rob) eager to get airborne.

Rob Raine settles into K-13 DMX for his first glider flight, accompanied by his father Steve (centre) and Insturctor Dave Jesty.

The only other pilot to fly today (apart from Dave Jesty and myself sharing back-seat duties) was Rick Wiles, who prised himself away from computer work in the clubhouse in a brief attempt (cable break!) to stay current.

In addition to the wet and increasingly gusty conditions, our main problem today centred around cable breaks, resulting in a pathetic 'successful launch-to-launch failure' ratio of 3:4. This was through no fault of either the pilots or the winch driver, and we suspect that unreported snarl-ups in recent weeks may have compromised the integrity of the relatively new cables on the ML winch. Today, the few successful launches delivered to us by John Howe were corkers, but otherwise he and club Chairman Steve Lewis spent far too much time having to retrieve and re-join broken cables - getting colder and wetter in the process (along with those of us at the launch point).

Back at the hangar our technical team (  Chris Kaminski and Martin Smith ) augmented by Mike Keller, Mike Ashton and Alan Carter spent many hours continuing to renovate the Pirat's wing centre section, while Ged Nevisky worked beneath the red Land Rover Discovery attending to unreported serious damage to a rear shock absorber assembly.

Team work on the Pirat wing

Sandra Buttery was also on-site, while three of our staunch committeemen, Steve Lewis, Bob Jones and Ged Nevisky, were seen in earnest conversation regarding matters strategic - or maybe just comparing hangovers, Christmas prezzies and New Year Resolutions.

Pictured through a fogged-up lens enjoying the comfort of a warm clubhouse are (from left) Ged, Dave and Rick.

A happy, safe and soarable 2012 to you all.

Bob Pirie

Saturday 24th December 2011

Just a few of us managed somehow to escape family duties.

With the airfield still wet and showers in the forecast it was a couple of hours of chat with friends in the clubhouse in front of the woodburner.

Hope the weather improves soon.

Steve