Sat 21st June

 Only a small group turned up on the longest day of the year, with just three people asking for training. The sunny days we've recently experienced were replaced with quickly changing skies and included sporadic rain showers and a blustery southeast, crosswind, thus requiring us to walk just the two K21s and one Junior to the west end of the field. 

Canopies covered for the strong sunshine (Karen King)

 

Steve Westlake handled the two-seater training and the other two gliders were initially used for solo flying. But then CFI Mark commandeered one of the K21s to give BI candidate Paul Medlock more coaching, and Mike Sloggett offered to instruct having arrived early for the member's evening party. 

 

Members Party (Mark Courtney)

 

The crosswind allowed the south ridge to work, and even led to what many felt was wave, with flights nearly reaching 3000ft. All in all, a good day with 18 flights and we packed up the toys at 5:00pm to get ready for the party. 

 

Vicki with some help from Bev (Jill Harmer)

 

Full congratulations to Vicki, in preparing a great meal for this year's Member's party. As well, special thanks go to Nick for getting the beer and Sally for so many of the other contributions, e.g., setting up gazebos and shade umbrellas, getting varied drinks chilled and ready for serving. And of course, her omnipresent quizzes and selling raffle tickets for a DSGC Charity prize draw. - Tom Sides 

 

"Thank you to everyone for their support and generosity for the raffle, and lovely to see so many of you at the Hog Roast last night, hopefully you enjoyed it as much as I did! Well done, Ashley Thomas for winning the top prize, the hamper.
I’m pleased to announce we managed to raise an amazing £550.00 for the DSGC Charitable Trust. Also a massive thanks to Vicki for feeding us all another fabulous spread! " - Sally Hender

Thur 19th June

Maybe they were deterred by the hot weather and the prospect of a long trudge up to the west end of the field for the forecast easterly wind, as the number of members present was somewhat smaller than normal for a Thursday. 

Hot day (Mark Layton)

 

The initial plan to just do aerotows only was yet again thwarted when the EuroFox failed to play ball with it reoccurring mysterious ignition fault. The winch was brought into action and with Callum Ellis and George Sanderson doing long stints before and after lunch we just about managed with the numbers we had. 

 

Towing back (Mark Layton)

Flights were relatively short with some a bit longer as the thermals, although keen to start, never really got going. The EuroFox made an appearance mid-afternoon after some fault-finding (thanks to the Team) to complete a couple of tows - but come 16:00 hrs everyone was feeling the effects of the heat and were glad to pack up before retreating to the clubhouse. A good day was had by all! - Mark Layton

Wed 18th June

 With the ground equipment and gliders all DI'd and the airfield readied for launching from the east end the wind tempted to have us change ends before we had even started! Thankfully it remembered the forecast at the last minute and started to strengthen from the SW. 

Messrs Turpin and Smith did most of the heavy lifting - and no doubt sweating - working their way through the flying list in what would best be described as increasingly moist conditions. No less than 17 training flights with some extended flight times courtesy of a reasonable abundance of thermals - albeit thermals that increasingly lacked clouds as the day progressed. 

Peter Smith with Paul Ives (Peter Smith)

 

Yours truly kept himself busy flying the 3 Trial Flights. Pete Startup managed the longest flight of the day making use of a convergence that got him halfway to Ilminster … and back! Nick Harrison had a couple of flights in JDD, as did Geoff Lawrence in HES and Kevin Fairburn continued to build his hours in HMS.

Thanks to Stu Procter for working on the Eurofox which managed to behave itself for most of the day. A full and productive days flying all rounded off with tea, cake, ice-cream and beer in the clubhouse afterwards. - Shaun Dayman

Sun 15th June

A better day was forecast today, which meant a busier Clubhouse for the second day of the weekend. 
The Duty Instructor had been taken out for Father’s Day, so we were lucky that Mike Sloggett, Peter Smith and James Flory were happy to stand in. We then had a surprise visit from Glenn Turpin back from sailing, who after currency flights, also stepped in to help complete the list.

Flying started at 10:30am with all four two-seater gliders in use, Gordon Hutchinson (DLM) making sure everything ran smoothly. At 12:00pm, the private owners started bringing their gliders over to the launch point. Dan Hender (JDP) taking the first aero tow, closely followed by Richard Roberts (V5), Simon Minson (SM), John Burrow and Alan Rappaport (DD3), Pete Startup (230), Mark Wallis (CEC), Chris Woodward (HKB), Paul Medlock (JDD), Barbie Fairclough (DFK) and Kevin Fairburn (new syndicate partner and first flight in HMS). 

230 " Cullompton - Sixpenny Handley - Cullompton 197km, Task set by Rich V5 for the North Hill Nomads 230, SM, JDP AND V5, and perfect to get us home before the day switched off." Pete Startup

SM " not quite so perfect 19km from home near Culmhead" Simon Minson

JDP " a bit tricky (slow) on the way back" Dan Hender

V5 " Well....... I overset as usual. Good day out with the DSGC team. Cloudbase was 4000ft to the east as forecast. The shut off was also as forecast, hence the 200km fallback . As it happened this was about right for the day in our location!  Extracted myself from picking fields twice, seabreeze seen on North and South coasts, central part was good to really good, with odd patches that could catch you out if not high enough into the headwind. " Rich Roberts

DD3 "What 'appened was.... although the forecast wasn't great Alan and I went for a gentle bimble round the club 100. Cloudbase started at 2000ft QFE but gradually went up to 3000 with a few good climbs. " JB

Got a bit difficult on the way back (Simon Minson)

 

Amongst the training flights, we had three previous instructors taking their turns, Peter Warren, John Sillett and Pete Harmer, lovely to see them all. Chris Warnes flew the two Trial Flight Visitors unfortunately the Eurofox failed on us part way through the day, but both visitors happily took the option of a winch launch instead and enjoyed slightly longer flights to compensate. Geoff Lawrence took over the afternoon DLM duty and organised the rest of the day successfully. Jill Harmer got back in the Launch point for the afternoon, to cover me while I flew, thank you. Everyone was flown by 5:30pm when we packed the kit away, and retired to the clubhouse for Vicki’s tea and cakes. 

Thank you to everyone for another successful days flying. - Sally Hender

Sat 14th June

 On arrival at the Club, possibly due to a mixed forecast of sunshine, showers and thunderstorms, it was immediately apparent that only a few members had been sufficiently tempted to come along on the last ‘pre-Summer Solstice Saturday’ of 2025. Maybe saving themselves for the club’s Social Event on Saturday 21st (note to all members - if you aren’t on the paper list please let Sally know asap if you’re attending).

James Flory kindly stood in last minute as Duty Instructor, with Simon Jordy available for trial flights and Stuart Proctor in attendance as Tug Pilot.  Given the low numbers and that the weather/cloud base was likely to be changeable, rather than a ‘no flying day’ the decision was taken to do aerotows only.  A decision gratefully supported by all present. 

Junior next (Karen King)

 

Over the next four hours, with a one-hour lunch break due to a downpour, there were 6 launches with 3 of those soaring flights taking the relevant pilot to a cloud base of around 3000feet.  James and Stuart each did a couple instructional flights, and by special request Stuart did some aerobatics during the final flight of the day (at the blogger’s request to ‘burn off height’ although in reality a reason is never needed!). 

All helping to dry the glider (Karen King)

Despite the forecast it was a reasonable day with Gordon Hutchinson Saturday’s pundit (72 mins), new members ‘family Hoggarth’ always keen to help and a small but efficient team of long-time members, particularly when it came to wiping down gliders.   - Karen King

Wed 11th June

A fairly standard day of training / check  / solo flights mostly circuits with a few extended. 

Well done to Kevin,  who can now apply for his licence (Ian Mitchell)

 

Congratulations to Kevin Fairburn who completed his Cross-Country Endorsement with Ian Mitchell in Rotax Falke, and supported by DSGC Charitable Trust. - J&P 

Sun 8th June

The danger of being the last in the clubhouse of a flying day is getting caught by Jill with “will any one write a blog please?” plea! So I was collared, no where to go… Excuses up front, I have little knowledge of the good work done up front only that JB and Pete Smith were instructing and Mark Wallis was in the DLM regalia when I met him. 

With SF and Eagle business to attend to I had only passing regard for the sky which looked to be playing out the forecast. Unstable, none too high a cloud base with a layer of high cloud and over-development keeping the sun from warming things too much. At times in the afternoon it felt autumnal to this man in shorts and flip flops! 

SM on aerotow (Simon Minson)

 

Pete Startup in 230 had the best crack at things visiting Crediton, Wellington and Chard for 110kms but he struggled back and I noticed Simon Minson in his ASW20 kept it local before switching into coach mode and flying with Paul Medlock on some instructor training flights. For a while it was quite soarable locally and the melee over the site quite intense! 

 

Stirling Melhuish SF27 in the launch queue (John Pursey)

My earlier SF business had involved rigging - getting Alan’s SF27 rigged and at long last we actually managed to get Stirling Melhuish up in it. With countless SF27 shares and outright ownerships to his name he of course, ironically, was flying the one we owned but he was there! Well done to Stirling, let’s get the next 2 SF27s over the finish line and go racing! 

Chilly in shorts today (John Pursey)

 

I was the last to land (in an SF naturally) at 5:20 after a jolly 90 minutes so, all in all not a bad day. - John Pursey

Fri 6th June - Course Week

 After a less than optimistic forecast for the week we managed to fly every day, with many long soaring flights in often very thermic conditions. 

 

June 2025 course

Everyone made great progress. Chris Mew returned to solo, Tim Petty made great progress to getting back to solo. Mike Rigby did his first solo aerotow and completed his longest soaring flight at over 2 hours. 

 

Well done Mike solo aerotow (James Flory)

Harry Rigby  made great steps towards re-soloing after a break whilst finishing Uni. Phil Taylor and Ainsley Fisher both made great progress towards going solo.

 

Great skies (James Flory)

Overall a great course with the weather delivering some great conditions. Thanks go to Kevin Fairburn, Shaun  Dayman and Emna Flory as our ever helpful ground crew, and Instructors James Flory and Guy Adams.  And a big thank you to Vicky for providing great food through the week.- James Flory

Thur 5th June

 It was a little wet to start, but course members were kept busy with lectures, unfortunately most of the Thursday regulars disappeared at lunchtime.

After lunch, the sun came out at times and the wind was spot on the right direction for the ridge to work (it still felt like Autumn though). The course instructors decided to get going,  with no rostered course helpers, there was a call for help to the Clubhouse, a minimum crew was found to operate the winch, cable retrieve and launchpoint  for the afternoon session.

Pushing the Junior on line (Richard Lean)

 

Most experienced soaring on the west ridge,  a few thermals early on, there was even a bit of wave possibly. All the course members had good flights and Mike Sloggett and Chris Wool  looked after the Thursday Regulars, with 14 winch launches (thanks Tim and Paul) in total. - J&P

Wed 4th June

 Today was a case of typical April weather, unfortunately its June! The odd bit of occasional drizzle, breaks for proper rain showers, dodging rain clouds, gusty turbulent skies with fantastic lift and strong sink whilst wearing wooly hats and jackets.

 

Assessing the Junior mainwheel brake (Mark Layton)

The day started with a small team derigging Junior FZF to investigate the ongoing mainwheel brake problem. To gain better access, the glider was inverted and placed on some small trestles to make it stable. The wheel and brake assembly had to be removed and refitted numerous times to determine the cause and having it upside-down saved George Sanderson, Gordon Hutchinson and Mark Layton from scrambling around on the floor. Glider manufacturers all have different idea's on how to make basically the same part and the Polish seem to be be masters at coming up with some clever but obscure solutions. It was found that various components of the brake system have become worn and now have to be replaced. Unfortunately, we don't have all the parts in our small stock of spares and those we have need specialist machining to enable them to be assembled correctly. Hopefully we can get it sorted in the next week or so.

Two lines for the course week (Peter Smith)

 

An improving sky (Richard Lean)

Meanwhile on the field, the course members and a smattering of Wednesday regulars were being guided by James Flory, Guy Adams and Pete Smith. Before lunch the flight times were relatively short, but after a rain-induced lunchbreak the conditions changed as predicted. 

Rain clouds in the locality (Mark Layton)

 

The thermals started to kick off and the end of the west ridge became a 'safe place' to top up on some height. There was some  terrifically strong lift about up to cloudbase if you were lucky enough to connect with it, but there was obviously some wicked sink about as well. 

Wildflower area (Mark Layton)

Most people had good soaring flights as the passing rain clouds stayed away from NHL for the rest of the afternoon. By 17:00 everyone had flown and with Chris Mew re-soloing after a bit of of a lay-off on the last flight of the day, everything was packed away. - Mark Layton