Unfortunately there was no Duty Instructor for Wednesday
the 7th of August and the weather wasn’t great either with low cloud and the
odd light shower. Basic Instructor Phil
Hardwick’s first task was to cancel the 2 One Day Courses.
A small group of Wednesday regulars turned up and started working on the aircraft. Malcolm and I pumped up the nose wheel on the Puchacz, Gavin and Dave Archer and later myself and Malcolm joined in to help remove the panels around the instruments to enable the launch assistant to be fitted to the Astir CS77.
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| Delving into the innards of the Astir CS77 to fit a launch assistant. |
The
removal of the panels and the replacing of them turned out to be a tad fiddly,
in fact the fitting of the launch assistant took no time at all, the removal and
replacing of the panels took up the entire day!!! Being the helpful chaps we
are when the weather improved enough after lunch the rest of us left Gavin, Dave
Archer and Colin to finish the job
whilst we went off flying!
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| Colin doing a great job spraying the undercoat on CCY. |
Hugh was first on the list, Mike Bennett offered to winch and Lorraine worked the Launch Point. We launched Hugh in the K8 into a leaden sky with a brisk 10 knot wind straight down the runway. Hugh timed it perfectly (or was it just luck) and got straight into strong lift of 4 to 6 knots and was soon at cloud base of 2,350 feet. Not wanting to deny others of the pleasure of the conditions he returned after 20 minutes, air braking down. Phil Hardwick and Malcolm flew their Twin Astir and I climbed into the K8 but the sky had changed, where were those dark clouds? The Twin Astir was back on the ground after 7 minutes, I struggled to stay up for 12 minutes. But then another brief period of better lift and Phil and Malcolm managed 17 minutes. Mike Bennett, Hugh and I took it in turns in the K8 and Phil gave Lorraine and Dave Archer a pleasure flight in the Twin Astir.
Malcolm took the Twin Astir up for a solo flight at the end of the day and got the longest flight of 21 minutes, but full marks to Hugh for giving up his first flight early to allow the rest to have a try.
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| Dave Archer's view of the grey sky. |
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| Dave managed to get a picture of one of the brighter moments |
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| "With my tractor I goes a winching". Hugh brings the winch back to the Motor Transport Hangar at the day's end |
Thanks to all who came, especially Dave and Lorraine who knew they wouldn’t be able to take the controls today but still wanted to help out.
Full marks to the aircraft maintenance team for fitting the launch assistant to the Astir CS77.
Steve Fletcher
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