With a good day forecast and knowing it was his turn to fly today, (after a day being crew and dog sitting on Saturday) Dan was actually out of his tent at 7:30am!! He helped take the covers off of LEW, Chris Gill’s Arcus, then attended the briefing which took place at 10am with the three ’bow tie’ tasks set, weather dependent.
Sniffing in the Arcus (Sally Hender) |
Flying with Chris Gill, Dan took the first launch of the day at 11.30, being the ‘sniffer’. The rest of the grid then started to take off from 11.50am, with six tug planes and grid of 34 solo gliders and 6 two seat gliders, this was cleared by 12:46pm, and Task A chosen by the launch director.
Task A (Sally Hender) |
Dan…. "Hard day, made it round, 207km, speed 115kph, flew fair amount of the task, no need for the engine! Nice to try the Arcus, basically a Duo with flaps! But would make a nice club trainer Tom! Good fast first leg, with very little turning. Turned Swindon, with no sun on the ground to help, third leg was downwind, and struggled to get any climb to turn the next turn point at cloudbase.......
Final Glide (Dan Hender) |
......Final glide much easier, scraped over the threshold at VNE."
Thanks to Chris Gill for the experience. - Team Hender