After a whole 12 hours without rain the field had drained sufficiently to operate. Only able to pull one cable up the hill we retrieved it where it fell; so before the weather clamped some slick driving permitted a couple of handfuls of launches. The ridge to the south intermittently shed orographic clag so launch heights ranged from 700 to 2000 feet depending upon which side of a cloud you happen to be. The lucky ones had spectacular runs through feather walled canyons.
Running out of willing pilots before running out of weather meant everything was put away dry, so all in all a moderately successful day. Somehow the quality of flights seemed to be secondary to the fact that we were able to fly at all.
The first dry day of New Year and soarable to boot!
Having made safe a storm damaged panel on the hangar roof, we received some bad news. Doughnut man had left one pack at the checkout! But tears were choked back, upper lips remained braced and flying commenced late morning.
Best flight was Paul Bryant’s who thermalled off towards Newbury in a fresh SW wind, only to lose it all scrambling back to the airfield. Richard and Daren almost matched this longest flight, but the additional weight meant they were pipped into second place by one minute. Honours even I’d say.
Back in the club house the technicians were bidding for a record number of people repairing a Ka13 simultaneously. Quite novel really, five people working and one watching rather than the normal vice-versa.
Liz Sparrow wrote…
Sunny and soarable today…
…but not terribly warm – the ice didn’t thaw all day except in the sun. Meanwhile a great time was had by all, although poor Chris was stuck in the back seat of the K13 doing patter prep for his FI(S) course next month, Liz giving him a hard time from the front. Nigel gets ‘Soaring Hero of the Day’ award with 17 minutes and Liz and Chris get the XC award for being the only people to lay off enough to land the cables in line with the winch – nearly got to Burbage by the top of the launch. (But seriously, folks, not enough attention is being paid to this. We will have to start asking the winch-drivers to cut ALL launches that are not properly laid off. Make that New Year’s Resolution now!!) We flew from when the canopies de-iced until they started to mist up again. Nice day’s flying!
(Copied from Liz’s post to facebook, for others’ edification)
They say “a picture is worth a thousand words” – I think Colin’s last lyrical entry puts the lie to that cliché. The few of us who made the effort to make our way through the fog to the clear air at Rivar Hill enjoyed flights to remember – with one exception. Rowland needed the services of an instructor but the canopy’s of both the K13 and Puchacz misted up (despite all our efforts). For reasons best known to itself the K8 remained clear. Three of us had launches to 2,200′ taking 11 minutes to return to earth but Steve B managed to squeeze that extra minute to take “longest flight of the day” honours.
I snapped away with the camera on my phone. The pictures don’t do justice to Colin’s words but I offer them anyway.
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| Looking East |
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| Looking North |
