Simply an exceptional day for November. Southampton Uni GC were out in full force introducing some new members to the joys of silent flight and the sunshine encouraged the Libelle and Circus to rig. In the afternoon the visibility was stunning – so clear. Despite the westerly cross-wind we were getting some cracking launches. Both Puchacz’s routinely getting 1,500′. As the wind moved to north-west later in the afternoon that went up to 1,700′. There was even some thermic activity but quite broken lift. Enough though to encourage competition for the longest flight. Ana S set the bar at 17 minutes in the K8. A couple of valiant attempts to wrest Alan’s crown were made (Graham T in the Libelle, Martin H in the Cirus and Alex J in the K8) but didn’t quite make it. As we were squeezing in the last few flights before the light failed, and as the launch point had thinned out, Simon R defied gravity for 19 minutes. On the last flight of the day I indulged myself with a fast long, low approach up the airfield only to find out that my P2 didn’t need “ground effect” explained as he was an aeronautics Phd student who had studied ground-effect (theory only though) .
One of our best November days with 40 launches and 16:41 flying time.
Big thank you to everyone there who made it such an exceptional day, pitching in a keeping things running so efficiently. In particular those who deferred annual checks so we could get the “newbies” flown, the folks who were there early to set-up and those who stayed to the end to put pack everything away in the dark. Even bigger thanks to my syndicate partners Colin and Richard who shared the instructional load with me. Without their help we would never have got through the list (and I even got a break for lunch).
Oh, mustn’t forget our star baker Tony P who brought along a big box of his award winning brownies (well, don’t know if they have actually won any awards but they should do).
