Category: Keevil

Just to show that the weather doesn’t always take note of the forecast! I must admit that on Saturday night I felt that flying yesterday would be “interesting” for the wrong reasons but it turned out to be the exact opposite.

It was quite gusty when I left Andover at 8:30 but an hour later at Keevil the gusts had subsided sufficiently enough to make flying JMX a reasonable decision, in fact later on Keevil brought their own K13 out to play as Graham mentioned.

With Carol side-lined with a chest infection it was left to Chris and I to enjoy the delights of ridge flying the Janus. First flight lasted just over the hour and the second a very enjoyable 1:35. With ridge and thermal lift available we climbed to 2400ft and explored the ridge in both directions for many kms.

Jim and Nigel made good use of JMX on the ridge and needed most of their 1200ft height to push into the 18 knot headwind to get back to the airfield.

Though I think Graham may have wished he had a bit more height in reserve when it came to his turn in the Bannerdown K13!

Here is a view low down on “Smokey Joe” (Westbury Chimney). My phone’s camera makes the chimney seem further away than it really was.

With a moderate NW wind Carol and I went off to fly the ridge near Westbury.

Following a 1500ft winch launch we set off on track just to one side of Westbury Chimney for the White Horse some 7km away reaching it at around 1000ft.

A few beats up and down the ridge line we were up at 1700ft


We left the ridge at around 1000ft and landed back at Keevil clocking up just over an hour in the air.

Later on Chris and I took an aerotow back to the ridge.

But by this time the wind had dropped and the ridge wasn’t working so we flew around for a bit before returning to the airfield.

Yet another cracking day at Keevil, looks like this weekend will be good for the ridge as well, see you there  🙂

Phil