Saturday 3rd March 2012

Day started early at 8.30 the hangar area was busy. Mike Gadd was busy readying the kit ready for a challenging day.

Was that Master Chef being filmed in the club house? No it was me, cooking a full English breakfast for Martin Smith, Rick Wiles, and myself. Talk about a hearty breakfast! There were a few enquires as to whether I would cook a few more for members who found the odour too great to resist. Sorry every one! but it certainly set us up for the day.

As always Rick selflessly readied the "Gus" launch, towed out and DI'd the cables and ended up winching most of the day except for a short time after lunch when he grabbed BVB between trial lessons and instructional flights to practise his friends and family rating by flying with his son Matthew who had worked relentlessly retrieving gliders and running the launch point. "Thanks Matthew great job!"

BVB passes overhead.

Mike Jardine, Dean "Scratch" Hitchen were readying G-GJSK Astir for its annul ARC inspection by John Bolt. That went smoothly through.  Lets hope we get to do more souring hours in it this year guys?
Steve and Trevor were working on their Jantar, which requires a little work at the moment, we all hope that all goes well!

Sandra was busy jet washing the advertising caravan, and working on committee stuff, and Alan "Q" Carter was playing with the SF and associated gadgetry. "Have you seen the panel in his SF? It looks like the space shuttle! Great job Alan"

Chris and Karon had popped in for a break. Chris has been poorly recently and is now on the mend.
Martin had briefed on the day's conditions and the day was set to be quite challenging with fairly stiff SW 15 knot cross wind. Particular consideration was needed to drift and wind gradient on final approach!

Mike Gadd decided to test himself flying the Zugvogel in the challenging conditions and was pleased he did well. done. Bob Jones also flew the Zugvogel in the afternoon with his final flight being a hangar landing.

Mike Gadd and Zugvogel

We had two trial lessons today flown by myself the first was Simon Perkins from the Exmouth area, who had a interest in flying and was rewarded by being able to soar in a thermal with a Red Kite, and by gaining the longest flight of the day of 14 minutes.We left the wire at 1300 feet and went straight into a 3 knot climb to 2400 feet. The other trial lesson was Alison Donkin who lived locally, hope to see them both again in the future.

Martin was kept busy flying with Leith and Shrek, Leith is undertaking a fixed price to solo course, and
indeed the conditions made it a more intensive day for him, they both coped admirably.

A complete sheet of flying activity, all in all a very challenging and rewarding day.

Sean Parramore