Wednesday 28th September 2011

I could not have wished for a more enjoyable day to return to Brentor following my absence in Portugal. Bright sunshine… warmth… good company… and a healthy crop of trial lessons to keep Ged busy (within a little help from Martin Smith when two very nice ladies arrived). Plus a brisk and increasingly rough crosswind to keep us all on our toes. All we lacked were decent thermals or wave - and a few of our regular trainees who were rather surprisingly absent .


                                                  Our Visitors today
All club pilots present were current and capable; toying valiantly but generally unsuccessfully with weak areas of lift. The K8, Astir and the ASW20 all ‘gave it a go’ with disappointing results, and even our ‘night watchman’, Alan Holland, failed to perform his usual trick of conjuring lift from the dying rays of the sun.

Everyone who flew, flew well - apart from the occasional failure of pilots to ‘lay-off’ sufficiently for the crosswind. This can cause frustrating delays and cost us precious weak links, as well as potentially causing damage to fences. No one who flies at Brentor is a stranger to cross-winds, so let’s all make a real effort to improve our performance please. If in doubt, any instructor will be happy to assist.

Bob "skiving" in the ASW20F

Apart from skiving off in the ASW for a couple of flights later in the day, I worked with Richard Williamson in DMX getting some of his post-solo boxes signed off, including his first series of landings on the stub runway. Later on, John Bolt emerged from the depths of the hangar requesting a check flight. It’s always a pleasure to fly with John, and I saw this as a good omen, because it means that work on the Zug and Pirat is nearing completion and that he - one of our most experienced pilots - is once again ‘focusing his eyes on the skies’.

John Bolt obviously keeping a good lookout.

I’m not going to reel off a list of ‘thankyous’ - because everyone contributed 100 per cent to helping each other fly and, of course, to making our guests and their accompanying friends and relatives welcome.
At the start of the day our 'Fleetfettlemeister' Chris Kaminski had pointed out that both two-seaters were overdue for their monthly ‘wash and brush up’. So the team’s last activity before cracking open the beers was to give DMX a thorough cleaning and oiling.

Bob Pirie