Today is the last day of meteorological summer apparently. The weather was going to be tricky. There iwas a cold front passing through this morning due to clear through before midday. So what to do? After carefully checking all the available forecasts we decided to delay the flying start until midday.
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| Underneath the cold front before the rain |
Time to get on with a little work. Mike Bennett was up at the west end installing the new rumway threashold markers. I decided to sort out the hurdle fence locking wire ( after some cattle had broken through the fence ). Unfortunately for me while about half way through this it RAINED. Not the light, soft kind but monsoon style. With in a minute I was wet through. The things I do for flying.
By midday the front had definitely passed through so it was kit out and on with the fun.With the wind strength about 15 knots although it was almost straight down the runway it was decided to leave the K8 at the hangar. So DMX was taken to the launchpoint where it was joined by the Twin Astir. Today we would be using the new winch while Scratch set about the task of training the winch drivers on how to use it.
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| Barry under training in the new winch |
HXP was left at the hangar where Colin and I set about some TLC of the control circuit bearings a fiddly job which took a couple of hours to complete.
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| Cloud Streets from the NW |
Early on the flights were mostly circuits, although these were a little extended by the excellent heights being achieved with the new winch. As the afternoon wore on, the clouds gradually clear away to leave a sunny afternoon. By late afternoon we even had some cloudstreets. This proved irresistible to Malcolm ( anyone surprised by that ) and he flew with Mike in the K13 to record the best flight of the day at 26 minutes to the cloudbase of 2400 ft.
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| Instructor Mike's view of the hangar and clubhouse |
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| Climbing at 3 knots under the cloudstreet |
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| The cloud shadows add to the landscape |
And what of the winch. The launches were very smooth and apart from a couple of minor glitches ( cable break from a poorly made join ) it performed very well. The Twin Astir recorded it's highest launch from the short runway length being used today ( cattle in the top field ) at 1350 feet. Their previous best at this cable length was 1100 ft. This bodes well for the future with the new winch.
Steve
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