Wednesday 1st June 2011

It's always good to start and end the day on a high note, and we certainly did today!

I arrived on the airfield to find CFI Don grinning proudly from within the depths of the hangar, having played the role of "Zug-Fairy" by creating (with a little help from his friends) a super new Zugvogel cockpit canopy from a redundant K7 canopy. This means that - subject to a blessing by our resident inspectors - the Zug should be back on line shortly.

The new canopy on the Zugvogel

The, as we ended the day with a can of beer, Chairman Steve brought us the good news that our glider acquisition team of Messrs Neviski, Kaminski and Joneski had had a successful foraging trip to Scotland and would be returning with a classic Polish glider from the cold war era called a 'Pirat', which will be an interesting addition to our single seater fleet. As a bonus, we've acquired an excellent aluminium trailer as part of the package.

We owe a big 'thank you' to all those who contributed to the above achievements.

Operations-wise, in order to give both solo pilots and trainees a fair crack of the whip, we started the day with a 'mass rig-in'. Many hands made light work, and resulted in both club two-seaters and five privately-owned single-seaters arriving at the flight line simultaneously. What we lost in terms of a few early launches was more than compensated for by the number of launches (35) as the day progressed and - equally importantly - the number of experienced people getting in some fun flying as well as running the launch point and driving the winch. The day would never have happened without them.

Thanks to Phil Hardwick, Martin Broadway and Alan Holland for some splendid winching, and well done Andrew Beaumont for getting stuck in to training as a winch driver. (Phil's reward came later in the day, when he achieved a chart-topping 92 minutes in the Astir.)

One of our most enthusiastic helpers throughout the day was Richard Clark, who has upgraded his membership from 'temporary' to 'full flying'. It was good to see John Howe airborne once again after his recent knee operation, and we also welcome his son-in-law from the USA, John Dunn, who was introduced to the joys of soaring by Dave Jesty.

John Howe and son inlaw John Dunn ( is every male in this family called John? )

Jeff Craggs continued to whittle away at his post-solo exercises and, finally, 'well done' to Mike Keller for re-soloing.

Bob Pirie