Saturday 11th Feb

Just a nice day to be out enjoying the sun and the banter.  No soaring on offer but just good to get one’s bum off the ground after so many non-flying days.  The wind was forecast to go from East to South to North during the day – but there was so little of it that it made not a jot of difference.  A good day for check flights too and spot landing with no wind to help.  Comment was made whilst observing the K8 landing approach “you’d think Bob would be able to fly straight with all the experience he has”.  After that most K8 pilots appeared to take the opportunity to practice side-slip approaches.  The winch driver gave a nicely timed (requested) launch failure which Chris K took in his stride and did a well judged reciprocal landing back to the launch point.  James W when asked to demonstrate a spin and recovery showed off with a left spin off a right turn.

23 launches with Bob B being the only one to make double digit flight time (just).

The following picture was taken by Bob B of a blue glider on a blue day

Saturday 4th Feb – polar bears seen on field

I was extremely pleased that it had warmed up a little from when I got up by the time I was ready to leave for Shalbourne – it had heated up to -9.3C as I left home. Hmmmm!!!

With the ground temperatures that low and a forecast of snow arriving sometime between 12 and 3 it seemed to me (effete southern jesse that I am) inappropriate to try to get flying so we looked at some navigation and map reading, and how to use SeeYou to analyse flight traces.

With the electric heaters on and quite a few mad people turning up, it was quite festive in the Roundout. But we declared a close on the day in time for everyone to be home before the promised snow arrived – and of course then it arrived later than forecast. But in this instance, better safe than sorry…