After yesterday's successful barbeque today saw a few defferent faces amongst the Sunday soarers, but also a few regular faces missing. A light south easterly and possible 5 star rating, pilots were looking forward to a good day. A K13, K8, Puchacz and Astir were readied and towed to the west end launch point.
First trainee was Misha Skochko. With his training progressing well it was time to add some more launch failure practice to his skills. A demonstration of a go-around failure followed by Misha flying one sees him moving ever closer to his goal.
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| Misha ready for his launch failures. |
Training continued throughout the day with Aiden Hughes and Ken Hamblyn. Both had soaring flights with some valuable stick time. Today we were visited by Richard Hicks for a ODC. Richard was supported by his family and was introduced to his gliding experience by duty BI Richard Roberts. Although initially a little nervous Richard H enjoyed his day with us.
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| Richard keeping a good lookout. |
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| Richard's waiting for another flight. |
Today's solo pilots Zack Smith (K8), Viktor Skochko (K8), Freddie Purkiss (K8), Steve Fletcher (Open Cirrus) and Andy Davey (Ventus) all enjoyed flights of various durations. The longest flights were by Steve and Andy in excess of 3 hours each.
Steve's account:-
My task for the day was a little different with requests from friends to take pictures of their properties from the air. Luckily the lift to the south of the airfield allowed me to get all 3 pictures requested during my 3hrs 31mins. Some great climbs, some to 3400 feet.
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| Steve's view of the Puchacz over Tavistock. |
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| One of Steve's good climbs. |
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| Zack waiting in the K8. |
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| Viktor ready to go. |
I switched training aircraft to give John Osment a launch failure in the Puchacz. A successful flight saw John ready to re-convert to an Astir for the first time in many years.
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| John settled into the Astir. |
After all the training, Zack requested a flight in the Puchacz to start his conversion towards flying the Astir.
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| Zack getting ready. |
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| And promptly goes soaring. |
A special thank you to both Scratch and Mike Bennett who both spent time with George Purkiss on the winch. George is now cleared to drive the winch. Well done George.
The Sunday Soarers made best of the day with several soaring flights.
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