After a non-flying Saturday we were able to play. An up and down day with only one flight over 10 minutes. That was a massive (?) 12 minutes flown by the duty instructor (Ken Porter) and Graham Tanner. With 27 launches a pretty good performance for a January day.
Sunday 3rd January
Dodging the snow showers we managed to get some decent flying in today.
Ok the flight times were not as impressive as yesterday but all those present certainly enjoyed the flights they had.
Jim was suffering in the cold so thought Carol would not notice if he joined him and Paul P as P3 in JMX but eagle eyed Carol soon rumbled his little plan and oiked him out before take off!
And Rod was so pleased with the new oven gloves he was given for christmas that he just had to bring them to the club to show them off to the rest of us…………should have known better 🙂
I’ve said it before…
..and those who know me will know that I will say it again…
…you should have been there.
I wasn’t clever enough to take pictures, but if I had they’d have been of blue skies and an empty airfield – but this time because all the serviceable gliders were in the air soaring. Flights of the best part of an hour were the highlights of the middle of the day, and we were all fairly sure that Rod was off cross-country at one point!
We also had a visitor from another club to check out on the winch, I refused to fly with him but then he is my husband and many of you know what happens when we fly together… He, like me, thinks the Vega is very nice (as D Piggott would say).
And, for the instructors among you, not one but TWO ab-initios were there for us to hone our teaching/bastardry skills (delete where applicable) upon. And Andrew is in a wheelchair (No – he was before arriving!) so we have another member to take advantage of the hand rudder, although he’s obviously got longer legs than Derek so we will need to devise some foot restraints for safe flight.
Enough – after a hard day’s flying I’ve got a hard evening’s prep for the Worlds – Ayala is on her way over for dinner. See you all next time, meanwhile happy New Year and I wish you all lots of safe fun soaring in 2011
Liz
Thursday 23rd December
Not wishing to waste a good ridge day, the four of us present set up the airfield and towed JMX and EGF down to the launch point. After being idle for a couple of weeks in sub-zero temperatures all equipment obligingly roared into life on cue. Launches to 2000 ft revealed a top wind in excess of 25 kt, so getting to the ridge from half way along the airfield required some patience. This was amply rewarded by good ridge lift to 1 200 ft along to and beyond Combe Gibbet. Being decent types (and to avoid frostbite) we limited our flights to around 30 minutes. By midday we numbered an even half dozen, which kept operations going nicely until mid afternoon.
Some may say we’re crazy , but it certainly beats sleeping on the floor at Terminal Three