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Wednesday 26th October

After a run of good (for the time of year) flying days during the first half of the month things changed.  Last Saturday no flying due to low cloud and only 8 flights on Sunday into the teeth of a nasty easterly.  This Wednesday we didn’t fair much better.  The winch was in position and gliders out of the hangar by the time I arrived but they stayed there for a while due to the low cloud base.  Fortunately not too low to hold back Ken H and Rowland P continuing the re-roofing of the toilet block.

With flying delayed we set to breaking up the part of the workshop floor that had sunk – breaking up concrete kept us occupied until some breaks in the cloud appeared.

Who needs a concrete breaker when a large tooth pick does the job
The old workshop floor

We did get to fly but after Stan O had to abandon his launch (3rd one of the day) at 450′ we waited and waited and then knocked it on the head.  Needless to say once I was home the sky looked clear.

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Wednesday 19th October

If your idea of Wednesday flying was a bunch of blokes, of a certain age, pottering around, nattering, drinking tea, eating cakes and fitting in a bit of flying – then I have to shatter that illusion.  With 2 instructors busy from start to end (at 16:00 Peter E declared he needed to take a short break in order to eat his lunch) and solo flying it was pretty much non-stop and we clocked up 37 launches.  In parallel Ken H and a few helpers set to on fixing the toilet block roof.

Chris & Tony on the hunt for a lost carabiner
Swallow out to play

Only modest soaring opportunities with 9 double digit flights.  Rob J taking top gun honours with 22 minutes.  With showers around us, but not on us, there were quite a few rainbows on offer.

Part of a completely circular rainbow
Failed to capture K13 and both ends of the rainbow

 

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Windy Wednesday

Wouldn’t you know it – soaring into October and I’m reduced to ‘Spotting the gliders’. Nothing seen at Rivar yesterday, so assume x wind was out of limits. However, there were some brave souls about, most particularly a Twin Astir apparently having a whale of a time on the ridge at the East end of the South Downs.

However, I was particularly impressed with this guy’s navigation.

tracking

I watched him on and off for over and hour trudging along in a motor glider in a 30kt xwind and apart from the odd course correction, tracking straight as a die in what must have been uncomfotable turbulence. Textbook flying. And from experience I can affirm that it’s exhausting and sick making, often with the compass swinging all over the place.

So here’s an exercise for a rainy day – if the wind was 30kt from the East, his track (at the time of the snapshot) was 146 degrees and his ground speed was 51 kt, what was his compass heading and airspeed?