Saturday 29th September 2012

Brisk NW wind, 3/8ths cloud cover. Game on.

The weather and soaring forecast looked reasonably favourable. We have had some interesting flights with this kind of weather.

I flew with Ben Whillams, a temporary member who had returned to begin flying training. By the end of his first thermal soaring flight he was able to  turn the aircraft with a reasonable amount of style. Recently re-joined member Dave Wallis continued his retraining with Ged. They managed to climb to 3000 feet and took full advantage of the opportunity to revisit spinning. A later flight saw them practicing cable breaks. A re-solo soon perhaps?.

Instructor Ged and Dave Wallis discussing the outstanding training card items. 

The solo pilots made good use of the conditions with Alan Holland flying the club Zugvogel for 1 hour 14 minutes to record the best flight of the day. Hot on his heels was Barry Green in the Fokka 5 with a flight of 1 hour 4 minutes.  Both of these flights were terminated by the pilots choice, not the lack of thermals.

The Fokka 5 waiting to go.

Other news around the site saw Mike Gadd and David Bourchier fitting a new steel shoe to the front skid on G-DBVB; the Zugvogel trimmer being refitted by me, Alan Carter and John Bolt renewing the SF27 C of A, and Chris Kaminski working on the new instrument panel to the club’s SZD PIrat which we hope will be back in fleet service soon.

Steve