Mon 31st August - Ad-hoc day

Day after Task Week!

Amongst the first to rouse were Andrew and Philippa Mugleston, visiting family locally. A former member and club stalwart, Muggles helped unpack the hanger and get things going. With a gentle Southerly wind a relief from the previous gales, the field was set up with both winch and aerotow. Stirling Melhuish took to the winch and CFI Stu after doing the first tow handed in to Simon “bone dome” Jordy. 

The Junior staying up encouraged the Muglestons to take the K21 and a launch line developed. Pegasus, Open Cirrus, Duo and Eagle were all out. Brentor’s Richard Roberts attempting a flight home after yesterday’s outlanding at NH, needed a relight tow and this highlighted that actually it was trickier soaring than the clouds suggested. 

 

Heading off to Cornwall (Nick Jones)

  Nevertheless DD3 headed off west with Phil Morrison and Nick Jones and worked it’s way to Barnstaple and then Bodmin needing only a short burn on the way home to save the blood pressure. Great views along the N coast of Cornwall by all accounts and judging by Phil’s quietness later, very tiring with climbs that were never consistent and not very high.

Davidstow airfield (Nick Jones)

  Local soaring in the Eagle with JP was Dan Hender who ticked off some firsts with nearly 5 hrs and having to deal with a full bladder! Better cushions and bigger pee bags next time... A meander round some local TPs should give him something to put on the ladder so well done Dan. 

Dan enjoying the Blue Eagle with JP (John Pursey)

A good day but not brilliant locally with achieved average climb rates never really as high as it felt they should be. Some convergence effects across the Blackdowns kept the sky better behaved in a small area but not enough to encourage distant travel for those with trailers still at the “project” stage.

A reasonable end to an unfortunately disrupted task week. Fingers crossed for early September and a jetstream that has moved. - JP

Sun 30th August - Task Day

The abundance of jumpers, hats and coats were indicative of the ‘keen’ North Easterly wind at the airfield first thing with the cafe being popular for breakfast and hot drink orders from those members waiting for the wind to subside. However after a drive to the East end of the airfield Peter Field as Duty Instructor decided that flying would be possible under a Blue card - with the wind strength meaning that only the K21s would be used initially.

Once the K21s had been walked down to the South West corner of the airfield flying was soon under way mid-morning - with Peter Field and Dave Perriam in the first K21 flight establishing that the conditions, whilst Blue card, were relatively straightforward to fly in.

With both the usual flying list and ‘booked training’  well underway meanwhile the private owners, whether at the Club for the final day of the Task Week or general flying, were deciding their plans for the day.

W7 back in the air after a short break (Mark Layton)

And then with the wind reducing as forecast the card colour became Yellow, so late morning the DG505 was soon being brought down to the launch point followed shortly afterwards by the Perkoz - the first time in quite a few Sundays that all four two-seaters have been in use for Club flying.

There's always a thermal over Forest Glade (Mike Sloggett)

Around lunchtime the increasingly soarable skies encouraged private owners to bring their gliders down for either an aerotow or winch launch.

After a short lunch break needed to give the Instructors and members who had been running the launchpoint and Club flying all morning a rest the afternoon’s flying was soon underway - and with the wind strength continuing to moderate the card colour changed to Red, allowing a Junior to also be brought down to join the thermic skies.

As ever in and amongst the good soaring there was plenty of sink meaning that whilst most gliders were able to “get away” from the winch launch some needed to try again - all the ‘fun’ of gliding...

With a long list of Club flying the last hangar flights were completed well after 6pm.

A long but good day with one of the busiest Club flying launchpoints in recent Sundays - as ever thank you to all the members who helped from start to end of day to get others to get into the air - and a particular thank you to Rob and Sally who did very long stints on the winch and LPV during the day. - Mike Sloggett 

Task Day

Meanwhile the Task Briefing was for an improving day for a task with options for multiple turnpoints both west and east of North Hill.  

Only Ron and Dan Johns in 711, Pete Startup in 230 and Phil Morrison with guest Andy Holmes in DD3 were the only gliders to make an attempt.

Pilots comments:

"North Hill task week Day 8, Task 1................ Poor to the East of North Hill early on although it looked better, much better to the West later on. Was a bit slow today, first trip to Cornwall(just), this year."  NHL-YEO-LAU-NHL 248Kms - Pete Startup

"Sea air Launceston,  divert inland then tricky getting back over Dartmoor. range closed." NHL- LAU-NHL 160Kms - Ron Johns

"Thanks very much to all at North Hill and particularly Phil Morrison for flying with me and Nick Jones for allowing me to borrow his seat for the day.
Task week task with choice of TPs. Although the forecasts said better in the West, the Cu seemed to form in the East first, so we declared Yeovil then Launceston to give it time to get properly going in the West. A few deviations to cross water due to the scoring.
Quite a lot of time lost in order to finish nice and high and extend the flight. Attempted Crewkerne o/r to add an extra 70k but turned 8k short and needed the engine to get back sensibly. If I was a bit more clever/patient I think it would have been on though.
Spoke to Dunkeswell several times and Exeter which allowed us to be nearby when needed" NH2 - YEO-LAU-NHL 249Kms - Andy Holmes

 

With some convoluted scoring to add to the BGA ladder results for water / engines / span, for just the 1 day of Tasks.

Results were:

1st Pete Startup 1692pts

2nd Phil Morrison 1462pts

3rd Ron and Dan Johns 684pts

 Thanks to Ron and Pete for running the Week - pity about the weather. - J&P

Sat 29th August - Task weekend?

There were quite a few eager faces in the clubhouse for 9am, after checking the conditions Martin Woolner and James Flory decided to set up the launchpoint and winch.
Even more turned up at 10am for the Task briefing, however after an inspiring talk from Chairman Nick about his history in gliding, there were very few to rush to the launch to attempt the task!
The booked training for Alan Turner and Mike Meatyard enjoyed their flights with James Flory, however with blue card conditions few others were tempted to fly.

Northerly streets (Sally Hender)

Andy Davey and Gordon Hutchinson were put through their paces by Chris Wool, successfully completing their card checks.

DD3 returning from ........... (Sally Hender)

After numerous short flights, Peter Harmer  (with Ashley Thomas) managed to get the longest flight of 44 mins, only beaten by John Pursey and Phil Morrison in DD3  with a 2 hour flight (with a little assistance from their iron thermal - they did however enjoy the North coast working well in the howling Northerly wind.

........a trip to the seaside (John Pursey)

Flying was completed at 5pm in time for the paella to be started. Thanks to everyone for helping support flying (and grass cutting!). - Reluctant blogger Sally

Thurs 27th August

The day started bright and sunny.. but only lasted half an hour and it was raining by 09:00, several hours earlier than yesterday's forecast. Peter Smith and Robert Lee attempted to do some more rolling of the new leveled area, until the roller clogged up with mud.

The Thursday regulars practiced some splicing under Gordon Hutchinson's instruction. 

Practicing rope splicing (Jill Harmer)

Thanks to Stewart Henshall for bringing his VR kit in for everyone to try out Condor fully immersive 3D ridge soaring in the Alps.

Condor VR (Jill Harmer)

Congratulations to Dan Hender and Stewart Henshall for successfully passing their Bronze exams.

Dan and Stewart passing the Bronze papers (Jill Harmer)

At 15:30 the sky cleared and the rain stopped and a strong easterly wind set up. - J&P

Wed 26th August

Wednesday started with a huge turnout of members largely due to the Task Week, the field was set up for a north westerly with the landings on the recently improved section of the field, this sped up the launch rate quite a bit.

Pleasant morning (Mark Layton)

The first launch was about 11am due to the low cloud and there was thermic activity to cloudbase and some useful soaring to be had. Ron scrubbed the task for the day at 2:00pm and some of the members just soared locally.

Blue Eagle landing (Sally Hender)

After lunch the cloud base lifted to about 2,500ft and there was plenty of good lift to be had and many flights were about an hour with Pete Startup having the longest flight as usual having completed the Club 100 with a rather sticky bit at Crewkerne, the blue Eagle had some good soaring flights with John Pursey including checking out Ben Watkins who soloed the Eagle.

John Pursey with Stirling Melhuish (Mark Layton)

 Lasham member Andy Holmes was checked out by Stu in Perkoz and then took Dan Hender followed  by Charlie Broderick for some short cross-country coaching.

Peter Smith driving the Junior instead of the tractor (Mark Layton)

Peter Smith flew the Junior for a short flight, he could only spare a few minutes away from field leveling the flying continued to about 6:00pm (in what might prove the best day of the week.) - John Street.

Mon 24th August - Task Week

Another Briefing - another task scrub. 

Another Task Briefing - scrubbed (Sally Hender)

But work on the field continued with field levelling  - the next section - led by Nick Jones and Peter Smith and many helpers, rotivating,  stone picking and rolling  - too busy to take any photos. 

And Gordon Hutchinson and  Rob and Dan Hender were busy also with repairing lengths of winch cable. - Thanks all. 

Storm Francis has put paid to Tuesday flying, so next briefing is Wednesday. - J&P

Sun 23rd August

The day started a little cloudy and windy but with a large number of club members present. Flying started whilst Ron Johns was providing a socially distanced Task Week briefing. 

Socially distance Task week briefing (Sally Hender)

 With many Instructors present and keen to get in the air, the K21s were busy all day with booked training and ad-hoc flying.  A Junior and the K6 DRE kept the solo pilots happy and then Chris Wool was seen preparing the DG505  for flying for the first time for several weeks/months. This led to quite a frenzy with both Instructors and members keen to renew the acquaintance.

CFI Stu Procter enjoying the DG505

 With no improvement in the lowish cloudbase, Ron decided to scrub the Task Club 100 at 14:00pm. But several private gliders were rigged and  joined in enjoying some local soaring with the ridge working. Pete Startup 230 was the longest flight of just over 2 hours. 

North Hill - green again (Dave Perriam)

There were 50 winch launches and good day was had by all. - Dave Perriam (& J&P)