Last week myself, Jim and Claire went back to Aboyne for a weeks flying accompanied by Jim’s wife Shirley and dog Sam and puppy Luke. Also coming along was Henry from PNGC and his bus load of family.
Its a very long way, no denying it, about 90mins further than Portmoak but Tim’s kind lend of his driveway meant we could tow straight from the A34, arriving at Aboyne for beer’o’clock 11 hours later.
So why did we come back? In search of wave flying certainly but mainly because its realllly pretty.
Claire tows out behind the Euromouse tug, cheap and you certainly get a lot of towing practice. They also have proper tugs.
Snow cover Cairngorm and the Dee valley
As many runways as Heathrow dont you know.
Jim and Shirley take N for a flight. Shirley didnt appreciate 8knot thermals.
While i was kindly lent an ASW27
Looking upriver, you can understand why one of Liz’s relatives bought a place up here (other Liz)
Looking down river to Aboyne town
Aboyne is nice, you have reserved spaces on the runway, I’m sure this one is for N not 933
A bit of Tetris
A lot of flying in thermals up to now and ridge dribble thermals but what about the wave…
A promising sky to tow into, but this was treasurers wave, (we were warned by the locals who were airborne and had to burn two stroke to 5k to get away in weak wave but nothing ventured and all that) nothing was gained, those pesky thermals breaking it up again.
But in the afternoon Jim called up to say the wave had set back up and he was climbing away so Henry and I dragged N on to the runway, actually climbed behind the Euromouse (always a good sign) and kept climbing after release, as the wave bar passed by we averaged 11kts with the needles bent round the stops and climbed up to FL130.
Oh and Luke, he enjoyed himself too.
