A
boisterous, blustery wind from the south plagued the airfield all day.
Before lunch it had a pronounced westerly element, so the airfield was
set up accordingly. After lunch, a fickle touch of easterly began to
predominate, which necessitated a change of ends. The wind strength and turbulence ruled out trial lesson flights as a Blue Card became the order. Club members enjoyed some character building but rewarding conditions.
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| David Cowley practising an imaginary field landing (Peter Smith) |
There
was good lift up to 2500QFE, if you could stay in the
broken thermals, with the sky gradually clearing and going blue by 5pm
with splendid visibility. Several members had extended flights including Peter Warren in the Junior. David
Cowley was challenged to land from the north into an imaginary land-out
field which he managed so well that we had to
wait for the retrieve find us. The Devon countryside looked glorious
in the afternoon sun.
 |
| Cloudstreets from Honiton (Peter Smith) |
The only private glider out was JPT which Robin Willis-Fleming
kept airborne for around two hours.
An enjoyable day, but with only 13 launches, it would have been good to see more members taking advantage of it, but the Duty
Instructors, Ron Johns (am) and Peter Smith (pm) were nonetheless kept
busy - with some help from Peter Warren and John Street. Thanks also to
the DLMs: Trevor Russell and Nigel Everett who looked after the ground
operations. - (ed: mashup from Wendy Willis-Fleming and Peter Smith and J&P)
