Saturday 5th October

The cloud was on the hill when the first members turned up this morning, but it soon cleared into a pleasant warm, sunny October day.  After the recent poor visibility / rainy days the two-seater list was huge and despite having four two-seaters, we still didn't complete the training list until 1830. - Thanks to all the Instructors who shared the load - 76 launches in total.

There were lots of circuits and very little soaring, some Trial lessons and 6 private owners (- yes there were some left in Devon!) joined in.

Congratulations to Matthew W and Martin B for soloing at North Hill after their respective solos on courses at Lasham and Bicester.

Matthew solos at North Hill

Martin solos at North Hill

One of our visitors has sent this message of thanks:

'I'm writing to thank you for your smiling reception when I came to DSGC for my birthday flight.  The flight was brilliant, and I was overwhelmed by the enthusiasm and kindness and patience of everyone.  You have a great team.'

Kenneth Dent 92 years.

Peter flies 92 year old Kenneth on his birthday

A big thank you to Mike F who marked the day with his last Instructing flights before changing to a Ground Instructor.

Mike completes nearly 54 years instructing

Friday 4th October - Patience is a virtue

First day of the Long Mynd mini trip.
The low cloud and drizzle that waits for us at Church Stretton greeted us like a dog that had not seen its owner since July. Visibility was zero on the top of the Mynd as we turned into the car park.
A first for the group was seeing Ian M's  little face light up as we arrived, - (it is rather unusual for Ian to be at a venue before us.) He does of course work to 'British standard Mitchell time', any one who knows him will recall that the pre-arranged time can vary by as much as a week!

The low cloud was still lurking first thing so mass rigging ensued followed by the regular coffee shop scramble down at Church Stretton.

Ready and waiting.....

Everyone watched the rain showers develop on the horizon, bets were placed on their arrival time. Eventually the clearance that was forecast for midday arrived at 4pm, soon six gliders were launched into the WSW wind, low cloud still hampered visibility on the ridge.
Ian M Kestrel 19 523 and Mark C  ASW20 ENW stretched their 700ft to the limit out in the valley searching for wave, it was there but they could not quite step into it from such a low height, Andrew L  K6 GDE enjoyed the views of his old stomping ground, usually from the top of the stack! 
The ridge was soft all evening despite a brisk wind, most beats were between 400ft and 600ft this was probably due to wave. Flights of around 2 hrs was about the max due to the light fading.

Long shadows at Long Mynd

Forecast for tomorrow looks very promising---- watch this space! - MC

Also Friday but North of the Fourth.

The  advance party of the Portmoak expedition having arrived on site late on Thursday were greeted with similar gloom to that of the Mynd gang, a leaden over cast hung over the field and mist crept up the flanks of the Bishop while the windsock was doing it's best impression of a gravity indicator. Not the most inspiring start but there was a clearance forecast to come through after lunch. It must have been running to British Standard Mitchell time because by 2pm it was still very grey but at least we could see the bottom of the Bishop and there was a hint of blue to the west.

The Bishop has a cloud hat

Having helped get the club gliders out, Ruth had a site check flight with the duty instructor soaring the edge of the orographic cloud which was sitting on the Bishop followed by a simulated cable break and then was let loose solo in the K21 to soar for an hour in the now beautiful afternoon conditions. 

JB had been nabbed by the Scottish vintage lot to reminisce about the eagle and was then treated to the front seat of their T31 while another of their group flew their magnificent Slingsby Kite (1 of only 4 in the world) Flying around with them is almost as bad as trying to dodge paragliders.

Glorious afternoon light on the Bishop

 Ron and Wooly in ASH 711, Pete St in Discus 230, Matt in ASW24 M5, Ian and Tom in DG1, hundred, all filled their boots cruising up and down the ridge and trying every thing to contact the wave that looked like should be there but to no avail.  - Matt

Pete enjoys the view

Wed 2nd October - Tales from the Hundred Acre Airfield.

When Tigger and Piglet found Winnie the Pooh standing in the middle of the field looking sad they asked him what the matter was.

"look at my hanky" said Pooh sadly. "There's no wind and the drizzle has made it go all limp"

Piglet poked at the hanky with his stick. " That's your best Hanky too, isn't it Pooh" he said, trying to cheer Pooh up.

"I know!" said Tigger excitedly "I'll run around and around and drive the mist  away, 'cos that's what Tiggers do" And with that he disappeared leaving Piglet and Pooh watching Pooh's hanky still looking as limp as a limp thing which has got wet.

"Have you seen Eeyore" asked Pooh, trying to keep keep Piglet's attention.

"oh yes, I have" said Piglet. " I didn't really understand what he was talking about though Pooh"

"why, what did he say Piglet?"

Piglet furrowed his brow trying to remember exactly what Eeyore had said. "I think he said,' Well they won't need a tug pilot today and whose been playing with the log, I wish people wouldn't fiddle with things they don't understand. What miserable weather, I'm going home' or something like that; he didn't seem happy".

"well that's Eeyore" said Pooh with a shrug. "I don't know why he's worried about a log, there's a whole Beech tree has disappeared from up by the trailers.

"no flying to day then " said Piglet.

No flying today" affirmed Pooh.

- Tim 

 

Thursday 26th September

Ho Hum! Today's forecast started to go wrong at lunchtime yesterday - silly low pressure in the Bay of Biscay - bringing in cloudier, moister (read wetter) airflow enshrouding the entire airfield in low cloud and drizzle. But it was warm and there was no wind.

Mark gave a lecture on dry and saturated adiabats and then launch failures.

William supervised the installation of the new dishwasher. Tom was playing with the Accounts most of the day. A selection of members assisted Andy C from USA in trying to mobilise a YS55 trailer (to no avail).

Wednesday 25th September

Where to begin?
Despite the early morning mist it was surprisingly warm at North Hill and most of the gliders were in the North West corner soon after 10:00. With a non-existent horizon and bits of cloud wandering about aimlessly at below 1000ft it was anybody’s guess as to how the day would turn out. - Badly is the answer!

Few flights lasted  more than five minutes, the second one was a cable break and in all only about fifteen launches were made. At lunchtime it was decided to change ends and by the time lunch was taken low cloud had rolled in, the temperature dropped and the rain set in so we put all the toys back in the box and went home...
Hey ho!!  - Tim

Sunday 22nd September

Same warm, moist cloudy airstream but we were able to get going much earlier than yesterday. There were far more Instructors on site today than trainees, however this did mean that instructor training and check flights  did not adversely affect the normal flying.

Simon M was doing 5 year checks with Wooly, Pete was doing 3 year checks with John Si, the Culdrose crew continued their BI training with Mark and Simon L. The Rotax Falke was busy all day including refreshers for some of the VG syndicate. Ollie also had a couple of solos in K21 before leaving for Uni next week.

Saturday 21st September

High pressure is back, but a very warm, moist airstream meant no flying this morning....

Is that a beech tree?

but after lunch it cleared a bit and chivvied up by Duty Instructor Phil and DLM Ian, the kit was got out.

As it turned out cloudbase was only 700ft and practice launch failures was the order of the day for most. 

A couple of visitors from Culdrose brought a Puchacz for a spot of winch and BI training, and Lisa and CFI Pete were busy with 3 year Instructor checks. 

Heavy drizzle and steamed up canopies brought an early end to the day.

Wednesday 18th September

A reasonable forecast for today so a good turnout, and some Thursday flyers trying to beat the poor forecast for Thursday.

There was a very brisk north north-westerly wind which made the aerotows in the K13s quite interesting, in the morning the ridge lift was poor but it was easy to get away due to the plentiful thermals, the cloudbase reached 3,500ft and many long soaring flights were to be had -  Matt (as usual) had the longest flight of over 3hrs visiting Wimbleball on Exmoor.

 Roly managed three trial lessons after the wind dropped a little, in the afternoon the wind backed, and the ridge started to work quite well.

 Ernie & John St. had their 3 year checks with CFI Pete and had some enlightning flying, all in all a very pleasant, busy and rewarding day. - JSt. 

Wimbleball

Monday 16th September - Nympsfield Calling

True to tradition it was pouring with rain at 7.30am as we (Matt and JB) rendezvous in Taunton on our way to Nympsfield for a day on the ridges. The forecast gave the wind approx. 280ish @ 27kts and gusting but with heavy showers in the nicely unstable airmass. Trevor had set a 360k ridge task - NYM (Nympsfield), BAT (Bath Racecourse), LCL (Lower Clopton - up near Evesham), BAT,LCL,NYM. which seemed very possible as long as we didn't get washed down in the expected showers! 

Ground Features along the Cotswold edge

 We launched into glorious sunshine at around 11am and set off south along the ridges for Bath. We soon discovered that if you were unlucky and got low down on the ridge, usually because there was wave interference or because the sink from a thermal had killed the ridge lift, it became very turbulent and difficult to climb.

Heading south over North Nibly in glorious sunshine - Tyndale monument under left wing

 

400ft and in survival mode in the Wooton bowl. Very rough and not working very well! (Tyndale monument in distance)

 So we tried to stay higher by pulling up in thermals and climbing rather than just bombing along lower down. In the strong wind the ridges were an excellent trigger for thermals and staying high was fairly easy and enabled us to dodge the rain showers that were coming in thick and fast by mid day.

 

Climbing high and dodging the showers (overhead the M4)

 A lot of time was wasted while we waited for showers that were blocking our way to clear through so after turning Bath for the second time and getting stuck at 200ft for a bit soon after, we decided to abandon the last run up to Lower Clopton and be satisfied with 249k and a nice cup of tea back at Nympsfield!

All in all a thoroughly good day out - JB

Saturday 14th September

The forecast looked good for a September day, but unfortunately the wind picked up too strong and too northerly to make an easy get away from the winch. A few who had aerotows found it quite easy to stay up for a while although cloudbase didn't go as high as predicted.

"Soon after 11am I noticed R37 had climbed away under a dark street crossing the airfield. I joined soon after and spent the next 3 hours - scraping north , turned WEG and headed for Chard. With the fresh N wind I found my thermalling techniques challenged . Choosing between the risk of yet another field I turned West and had a comfortable climb just E of Dunks, and spent the rest of the flight in the relative comfort of "local to NHL"  .  A nice flight in some interesting skies. - Wyn"

 

Saving climb at Wellington Monument

 In the evening,the first of our season of winter talks this year, - Chris gave a good history lesson on the Battle of Britain, on the weekend of 73rd anniversary, and this was followed  by the excellent carvery from Maria and team.