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First thing there was a flurry of activity starting the repairs on the winch and rigging the Vega after its silver outing.
With a bit of a breeze pretty much on the nose good launches were on offer (I was getting 1,400′ two up in the Puchacz and 2,000′ in the K8).  Despite that no one was sticking until Rob J launched around about 14:00 in HAX returning an hour later to let his syndicate partner play.  I launched 3 minutes after Rob and stayed up (using my own thermal) getting to 2,700 – back within half an hour as I was flying with a TL.  Later on the K8 was cluttering up the launch point so I felt obliged to move it.  Once again launching just after HAX (this time with Chris K).  Weak thermals and a stiff breeze meant the thermals had to be worked at, and the climb rate carefully monitored against the rate of drift – it takes a long time (and plenty of height) to get back to where you started in a K8 on such a day.  The climb rate was just starting to improve and streets appear when it was time to return the K8.  Those conditions didn’t last long and nobody was able to take much advantage of them.
The toys were left out for some evening flying with Scouts.  Stuart T took half an hour to find the hangar with the K8 and would have taken longer if he’d have known the scouts hadn’t arrived.  For the last 2 scout flights some weak lift appeared and the flights were 17 and 14 minutes – not bad for 20:00.

All I can say is thank goodness for Andy Murray and Peter E.  Without Peter E we wouldn’t have been able to fly everyone who needed the services of an instructor and without the big tennis match we might have been even busier.  In the first couple of hours only the patient and determined (and maybe a little bit lucky) achieved more than a circuit.  Having a hot ship (such as, say, a nicely polished LS7) didn’t help.
Over the day about a third of the launches enjoyed a soaring flight with Rod H & Paul P taking longest flight honours in EUF of over 4 hours.  Half a dozen folks enjoyed their first taste of gliding.  Selvan converted to the K8 and Alan H got his silver distance in the club Vega with a trip to Bicester.
Many thanks to the few members who went above and beyond to get the toys out, kept us flying and put the toys away (oh, and fix the lights on the Vega trailer before heading off on an unexpected retrieve).  

Here’s what ours looks like:

and here’s the view out of the window:

and here’s a barogram

maybe it was to do with these:

Pity I was all by myself

Arriving fashionably late on the airfield on Wednesday I was pleasantly surprised to see that the midweek crew almost had the field set up and HAX trailer was parked at in the rigging area. ‘Just as well you got started early’ says I ‘cos it’ll all be over by one o’ clock’. HAX was hastily rigged and by 11 o’clock the entire club fleet was on the line, by which time the sky looked like this:

By midday Selvam and I were looking down at a deserted launch point.

By half past twelve the sky was beginning to look like this:

at which point the five gliders that had been soaring for an hour or so all landed for lunch. By this time the afternoon shift had arrived, so Stephen and I spent the rest of the day inflicting some serious ‘bung pulling’.

There may be a moral here somewhere….