Saturday 6th October 2012

With a NE wind and gusty conditions, Dave Wallis continued his 'refresher course' getting back into gliding after a prolonged break. We ticked lots more boxes on his progress card and he proved he hadn't forgotten how to do it by soaring for half an hour in an interesting combination of thermal, wave and ridge lift.

Flying was temporarily halted when the Twin Astir's wheel retracted at an inopportune moment, (i.e. while landing) blocking the field. About eight Chiefs and no Indians came to help and eventually the aircraft was towed on its cradle, avoiding the numerous bogs, back to its hangar for Ged to investigate.

Indians towing the Twin Astir using a complicated rope harness devised by one of our resident yachtsmen

In the reducing and veering wind, Shrek (back after a break of a few months) performed a couple of good launch failure recoveries. The second one was at a very awkward height but he correctly chose to land ahead, skilfully using the boggy patches to dramatically reduce his ground run, stopping by the winch before the ground starts to slope downhill. He then re-soloed, managing to eke out some soaring in the dying thermals.

"Shrek" looks pleased with himself after his re-solo

Another very pleasant autumn day's flying and thanks to all who helped.

David Jesty

Meanwhile down in the hanger there was lots of engineering noises ( hammering, grunting and head scratching? ) as the Guslaunch winch had one of it's cable drums removed to permit the brake system to be serviced. After approx 25years of service the only faults found were a couple of stiff pivots ( fixed with an application of copper grease apparently ) and a broken return spring.

The Guslaunch hub assembly with just the brake shoes attached.

Many thanks to Rick Wiles, Alan Holland and Dave Bouchier who gave up the whole of their Saturday to work on this and to Martin Smith, Colin Boyd and Sean Parramore for their additional help.

Steve