Category: Flying Reports

At last, we broke the link between days I fly and westerly’s (although it did veer westerly as the day progressed).  With the modest turnout and it being a bit lively for the K8 (also forecast to get more lively later in the day) we just had the two K13’s flying.  The day started with flying visitors – Bob B with Kaz, a friend from his sailing club, and myself with a friend of one of our junior members (plus his cousin, a friend and his mum).  Launches of 1,600′ were available and climbs to over 2,000′ but you had to be lucky to get a climb that would outpace the drift. Bob B was crowned soaring god of the day with 30 minutes.
No donuts or home baking on offer but the mini pork pies proved popular.  We were also treated to some excellent pictures of Bob and his recent exploit of flying a Spitfire along the south coast.  Also discovered that Rowland flew one many moons ago at Duxford.

Saturday showed the benefit of looking at forecasts and not simply peeling back the curtain, cracking an eyelid towards the heavens and thinking that’s your lot. Whilst certainly not a classic day the blanket overcast of the morning cleared at lunch to give soarable skies throughout the afternoon.

Also seen on the airfield was a rare Pokémon, so Paul grabbed his film camera to capture it… …He says he was taking a picture of Alan’s newly restored Swallow’s (re)maiden flight, but I’m not convinced. I guess we’ll find out in three months time!

Being ever safety conscious Graham brought his Steel toed boots….

cyclic

A word to describe Sunday!

Good conditions were around but you had to find them and have some patience, Chris and I flew round the Salisbury Plain danger zone in B1 and 737 with great views of the south coast in crystal clear viz and I continued on task to Oxford after a big detour and park. Further into the west country would have been a better task.

Back at Rivar lots of gliders rigged and Nigel and Peter were busy providing trial lessons.

In amongst it all no one really noticed Andrew sneak off in the stubby nimbus. We all noticed him return 313minutes later to claim his Silver duration. Congratulations!

Thanks to Jim for being duty DI both days and Rod who drove most of the launches.

Another July day and yet another cross-wind and mainly circuits.  Early on (launches 3 and 4) Paul P & Rob J in one K13 and Tony P and myself, in the other K13, managed more than 20 minutes with Tony gaining the bragging rights.  After that it was pretty much all circuits with only the occasional flights breaking into double digits.  Not content with second place Paul & Rob tried again in the afternoon and stuck lucky with a large field just to the south being combined and releasing all that stored up heat.  They clocked up 33 minutes – somewhat disappointed as they thought they were a minute short of Tony’s flight.  The log showed Tony’s flight as being 34 minutes.  However, it turned out that maths wasn’t the log keepers strong point and the flight was actually 24 minutes.  So, Paul & Rob the days crown was taken by you.

Despite the so-so conditions Colin and I were kept busy in the back seat.  That included Andy B demonstrating to Colin that he should be off-checks.

The distraction of the day was the film crew who periodically ran off with one of the “Wednesday boys” to interview them in the club house.  The Brind family K7 was rigged in order to take a photo for the Newbury Weekly News.  As it turned out the NWN decided to publish the story that week which meant it was too late to accompany the article

Despite what looked like a non soaring day we did manage to get some extended flights in.

As I didn’t look at the log before I left I think Colin took top honours with 23 mins followed by John Douglass and me in the Puchacz with 22 mins.

There was only a brief halt to proceedings to allow some drizzle to pass through but its fair to say that we all had a good time and quite a few flights were flown.

Alan Saunders ran out of excuses and had to fly solo 🙂

And Stan was duly signed “off checks” so well done to both of them!

Oh and Colin picked up a parking ticket 🙂