The last day of meteorological summer was heralded with low cloud, rain and a brisk wind. Let’s hope it is not a sign of things to come as we move towards winter.
Scratch was at the club to fit an extraction fan to the generator hut to help with cooling. He also planned to fit a small solar panel to charge the generator battery. Whilst installing the fan it was found that the output from the generator was 293V. After adjusting the voltage regulator and idle speed of the engine this was reduced to 247V. An added bonus to this was the noisy fluorescent lights in the clubhouse were silenced.
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| New cooling fan in position. |
Following lunch although the sky looked brighter, the cloudbase did not allow flying. By about two O’clock things were good enough, so the assembled pilots started getting ready to fly. We managed the first launch at 14:53 with John Smith and myself on board K13 HXP. His third flight was extended in broken weak thermals for what was to remain the longest flight of the day of 9 minutes.
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| John and I all masked up. |
Gavin, Malcolm and Barry took turns to fly the SF 27.
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| Gavin getting ready in the SF27. |
Meanwhile Phil flew the K13 with me to practice some BI patter. To avoid sanitising both cockpits, he decided to fly from the front seat.
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| Phil ready to go. |
Next to fly the K13 was Scratch, who took Heather for a couple of circuits.
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| Scratch and Heather. |
Steve Fletcher and Phil Hardwick had their conversion flights in the SF27.
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| Steve getting some tips from Barry |
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| Phil concentrating on his checks. |
Our evening visitor today was Phil Bowler who had travelled up from Wadebridge. He had two circuits with Mike Jardine including a hangar flight on the second.
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| Phil being briefed by Scratch. |
Only 13 flights after a late start, but everybody who wanted to fly did so. Thank you to all who helped. We made the best of the day.
Peter Howarth
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