I'm not sure whether it was due to a possible long late night for some or the email requesting trainees to limit themselves attending due to no rostered instructor yesterday, but I ended up with one trainee. Although one more would arrive later it would be a relatively easy day for me. This would allow more time to look after our french visitors (more later).
The morning greeted us with low cloud which would hang around longer than any forecast predicted. The first flight eventually happened at 12:03. A weather check to see the cloudbase was actually high enough to fly.
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| Let's see how high the cloubase is. |
Cloudbase about 1000ft so let's fly. Ed Nicholson settled in the front seat for an initial set of two training flights.
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| Ed looking out on one of his flights. |
We handed the K13 over to Steve Fletcher who was looking after our visitors. Steve's account of his day:-
Today we hosted Isabel and Mark, her Camera man, from a French TV company making a documentary about Peter Lanyon an artist who used to fly gliders in the 1950s and 60s from Perranporth. His abstract pictures hang at the Tate modern in St Ives and were inspired by his love of flying. He was tragically killed in a gliding accident in 1964 in Taunton. They filmed our flying operations during the day and Steve Fletcher flew the camera man for 2 flights to get aerial footage giving a commentary as they flew. Steve also gave an interview explaining how a glider flies and how the pilot controls it but how Steve’s description will translate into French we will probably, and luckily, never know! The crew were very grateful to us hosting them and enjoyed their day. The only question they asked Steve was what the yellow button on the top of the K8 control column was for, he kindly explained that this was for the machine guns! Hopefully no damage was done to Anglo French relations.
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| Filming a launch. |
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| And a landing. |
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| Mark ready for the aerial shots. |
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| Steve gets wired. |
With not many trainees, Ed stepped back into the K13 for some more training flights which included a go-around launch failure, landing in a different direction and the last flight a land ahead launch failure which served as a hangar flight.
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| Ed (in case you don't recognise his face) happy with his flights. |
Having painted the benches outside the clubhouse, Val came to the launch point to have three flights with me. Those approaches and landings are coming along. Keep going Val.
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| Val getting ready. |
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| Val looking out. |
A few solo pilots were also trying their luck, but conditions were not as per forecast and only circuits were achieved.
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| Johns and Ed taking it easy. |
Thank you to all at the club today. I think we maintained international relationships OK.
Peter Howarth.
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