It’s finally nice to see a few days in a row of sunny, slightly warmer (extremely arguable…) and most importantly, flyable, weather! Something we have all grown not used to after the last few months of mostly dismal conditions.
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Unpacking the hangar (Dawson Panter-Wray)
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The day started with the hangar being unpacked bright and early under the completely blue sky before a thorough briefing took place from James Flory in the clubhouse with a great turnout and variety of members, ensuring we were all aware of any potential threats of the day, especially with quite a strong and gusty at times breeze coming from the NNE for much of the day. We quickly made progress in moving all gliders to the west end of the field and began launching shortly after 10am. Those who arrived in shorts and minimal layers I think quickly realised their mistake as there was certainly a huge wind chill despite the deceiving sunny weather and blue skies!
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A strong northeasterly (Dawson Panter-Wray)
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A huge thanks as always to everyone who helped throughout the day; experienced, juniors & new members alike who all worked well together to ensure that the day was able to be as efficient, smooth and well-run as possible. Everyone got involved and helped where they could to ensure we made full use of the time we had available to us, the launch rate, and as always most importantly, making sure everyone got something useful out of the day learning new skills, both in the air and on the ground.
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Waiting to launch (Dawson Panter-Wray)
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Special mention to our superb instructor and stand-in Duty Instructor for the day, James Flory, for ensuring that we all got to maximise the value of our sometimes shorter flights due to some fickle thermals while still making sure we were all learning valuable skills and lessons, and of course for ensuring the slick operation of the airfield, all at the same time as per usual! Our thanks extend to the other instructors who helped to lighten the load of the two-seater flying list and Tom Sides for taking care of our trial flight visitors who we hope to see again soon.
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Getting artistic (Dawson Panter-Wray)
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Overall, with 37 launches in total today, and many more on Saturday, hopefully this weekend was just a preview of the nicer and more settled weather to come over the coming months and we can all return to enjoying some more long-lasting sunshine, thermal activity, and warm weather at DSGC at some point soon. - Dawson Panter-Wray
